


The Shadows Between the Neon

by matrixrefugee



Series: Cecie Martin [4]
Category: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Genre: F/M, Horror, M/M, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-28
Updated: 2010-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-12 06:44:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 54,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Halloween in Rouge City...a killer is roaming the streets...and is Joe the next victim?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. October 21, 2159

+J.M.J.+

The Shadows Between the Neon

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

I have a lot of credit to give where credit is due: In some ways, this story is inspired by a lot of elements and concepts from a lot of different movies (besides "A.I."), including, but not confined to: _Dark City_ (1998), _Road to Perdition_ (which, alas, I still have not seen), _Vertigo_ , and others. The structure of the story was in some ways inspired by Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ and Stephen King's _'Salem's Lot_ (which I'm reading). But I also am indebted to Ruby Tuesday's "A.I." fiction "Lullaby for Cain" (On Laurie E. Smith's excellent "A.I." fansite "Clear and Haunting Visions"). I'm intending this as a Halloween treat for all of you, so I'll be trying to get a chapter out each week before "Fright Night". Enjoy! The rating may go up on this, for violence. Mwahahahahaha!

Disclaimer:

I do not "own" "A.I., Artificial Intelligence", its characters, settings, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late, great Stanley Kubrick, of DreamWorks SKG, Steven Spielberg, Warner Brothers, et al.

I: October 21st, 2159

Transcript of an Instant Message from Cecie Martin ("RougeCityCecie") to Frank Sweitz ("HeroicReporter23")

HeroicReporter23: Done did any dumpster diving for me?

RougeCityCecie: Yeah, I came up with this: http:/ .

HeroicReporter23: Cool!

HeroicReporter23: Grreat! They've got a job for a seasoned reporter like me

HeroicReporter23: sez it here: experienced reporter needed. I wonder what kind of experience they want?

RougeCityCecie: watch out, Frank.

HeroicReporter23: ::halo is shining::

RougeCityCecie: Yeah RIIIGGHHHT! 8^P Think you can handle the terrain here?

HeroicReporter23: Probably. I've got Bernie-girl now.

RougeCityCecie: "Keep it clean, Frank!"

HeroicReporter23: CENSORED!

HeroicReporter23: It's a weekly, right?

RougeCityCecie: It comes every other day.

HeroicReporter23: ?

RougeCityCecie: We're a little different here in the City.

HeroicReporter23: So how are the men in your life?

RougeCityCecie: Kip's still not quite out of the woods over Irene.

HeroicReporter23: Yeah ::sniff:: I felt the same way when my parents died. I still cry for them once in a while.

RougeCityCecie: Irene had it lucky; she just went away quietly in her sleep.

HeroicReporter23: what about metal boy? What about the robot who looks like me?

RougeCityCecie: I haven't seen Joe much lately; he's been undergoing some repairs, sort of a downgrade.

HeroicReporter23: downgrade?

HeroicReporter23: ?

HeroicReporter23: ?

RougeCityCecie: He had a chip removed.

HeroicReporter23: why?

RougeCityCecie: I guess one of his chips was faulty and it could cause problems for the rest of his programming, so they had to remove it before it went bad. Sort of like that Y2K thing.

HeroicReporter23: Why, what would happen? Make his pretty head explode?

RougeCityCecie: No, it would screw up his other chips and cause some serious malfunctions. It's not just him, it's a recall of this entire line of chips in a lot of models

HeroicReporter23: phew, at least he's safe now, right?

RougeCityCecie: Yeah, Flyte couldn't afford to lose him. Joe's one of his best Mechas.

HeroicReporter23: You couldn't afford to lose your boyfriend either.

RougeCityCecie: He's not my boyfriend, silly.

HeroicReporter23: well, he's sure not your girlfriend.

RougeCityCecie: ZAP!

HeroicReporter23: If he's not your boyfriend, what is he?

RougeCityCecie: My muse, my confidant, my best friend.

HeroicReporter23: Aaaw!

RougeCityCecie: I suppose I might call him my gentleman friend.

HeroicReporter23: That's more like it.

HeroicReporter23: what about Mr. Flyte? How's he doing?

RougeCityCecie: He's doing okay from what I can tell, especially now that he's gotten this chip thing fixed. He had three Mechas all with this chip, and it took a little doing getting it removed and adjusting the programming on 'em.

HeroicReporter23: Gotta run. "Law and Order" is on.

RougeCityCecie: 'Kay, Frank. G'night. Phila sends her love to you and Bernie.

HeroicReporter23: Na-night, Cecie. Bernie's back atcha. "Give my regards to Broad Way"

HeroicReporter23: "Remember me to Harlot Square"

RougeCityCecie: ROTFL!

HeroicReporter23: "Tell all the gang at somethingsomethingsomething that I will soon be there" 'cause I'm gonna try and get the job. I'll email the details.

RougeCityCecie: 'Kay, Frank.

Cecie logged off the computer in Chatters, the largest 24-hour cybercafé in Rouge City, collected her disks and her notebooks and packed them back into her bag. She got up, signed out of the guest book at the front desk, said good night to Larry the tech and headed out into the night.

A cold wind from the river whipped around the corner formed by one of the concrete pylons supporting the Upper Deck of the city. She turned up the collar of her black simuleather trench coat and quick walked to the main escalator.

She checked her antique wind-up pendant watch: 11:30 (22.30 by modern time standards). It was late even for her, but she'd had a lot of files to send off and the Internet connection on her datascriber at home was still down. Derek the Net wonk hadn't called her back.

She held onto her hat as she stepped onto the escalator; a gust of wind tried to snatch her fedora from her head. If the wind was this bad down here, it would be worse upstairs.

The crowds on the escalator had thinned a little, so she had an easy ride—no giggling college kids on the lam or smirking business types. She hated it when some jerk in a pinstriped suit tried talking her up—or worse, tried to feel her up, thinking she might be a Mecha. She'd always turn and blink at them over the mirrorshades clipped to her glasses, which often was all it took to put them off.

But it seemed unusually thin. Sure, the post-summer lull had set in, things would pick up again in the middle of November to slack off again after New Years. But it didn't seem right. Four years of living in Rouge City had taught Cecie a good deal about this quirky, moody, demi-mondaine city. She knew it well enough to read its moods. She shrugged. The cold wind had probably sent the crowds scurrying into the clubs and casinos, looking for warmth and a warm pair of arms.

She stepped off the escalator onto Main Plaza and headed home to the Hotel Graceley.

Sure enough, the wind grew worse up here. She had to hang onto her hat with both hands. Cold gusts whipped at her, billowing the skirts of her trench coat and catching under the split of her black skirt.

Her path took her along a dull-lit stretch of Main Boulevard. She took a side street onto an alleyway tonight to get into the lee of some of the buildings.

She kept her hand on the stunner in her pocket. Rouge City had a reputation for few assaults, but they still happened from time to time. Her eyes went on wide angle, scanning the shadows for any figures, any movement. She put her awareness on high alert. She looked back, over her shoulder, from time to time.

Just as she reached the mouth of the alleyway, her foot caught on something on the ground. She jumped to keep from tripping and falling on her face, folding her thighs against her belly.

She hit the ground and turned on her heels, looking back.

A prone figure lay on the pavement at her feet. She stooped over it, expecting to find a drunk or a stoner. But she didn't smell any booze fumes or the odd metallic tang of stringer. She smelled something greasier.

She took out her pocket flashlight and turned it on the figure.

The beam fell over a dense shock of dark brown hair with bleached blonde lights. The figure lay face down; she reached out and turned him over carefully. His arm fell limply to the pavement as she did so. The man felt awfully cold.

The light glinted off metal. She looked at his torso as she laid him flat on his back.

The front of his slightly baggy white silk shirt had been torn open from collar to waist. A gash in his flesh followed the line of the tear in his shirt. Dark, wet patches stained the ground where he had lain. The same fluid stained the halves of his shirtfront from the cut lubrication tubes inside his torso.

Wires and components lay exposed, some dangling from the crevasse in his body. Hands shaking, Cecie turned the beam on his face.

The Mecha's face lay undamaged, the skin looking more plastic, even doll-like in its stillness, a dark young face with amber eyes lying open, sightless, lightless.

Dead.

She fumbled in his trouser pockets for an address card; she found it.

 _In case of severe damage or malfunction, please call Blue Fairy Escort Service_.

She pulled her cell phone out of her coat pocket. It took an act of the will to get her shaking fingers to press the right buttons.

"Blue Fairy Escort Service, technical division, how can I help you?" said a business-like voice.

"I found one of your Mechas in the alleyway behind WildCards, the casino over on 12th Street. Someone killed him."

A few minutes later, a couple of techs in an electric cart and a handful of security guards showed up. While the techs assessed the damage, the guards questioned Cecie.

"Did you see anyone in the alleyway? Anyone at all?" one guard asked her.

"No, I was alone, I looked around; I'm cautious of places like this."

"Did you hear anything? Footsteps?"

"No, the wind was too loud."

"Did you see anything suspicious before you went into the alleyway?"

"No, I didn't"

The guard looked her in the eye. "Do you know anything about this destruction that we ought to know?"

"No, I wouldn't do something like that. My best friend is a Mecha."

"Stanger, let her alone," said the second guard, a woman. "The poor girl's shook up." To Cecie she added, "You want one of us to see you home, Miss Martin?"

"I'm over in the Graceley, I can make it there. I'll be all right."

A small knot of onlookers had gathered at the mouth of the alleyway, mostly Orgas, a few Mechas. Several cries of shock arose from the former as the techs and the guards carried out the tattered body of the Mecha; the latter regarded the sight unblinking, some mild concern from a few, in comprehension from most. The crowd parted to allow the strange procession to emerge.

A graceful figure in gleaming black and silver stepped from the back of the crowd and blocked Cecie's path. She looked up into a welcome dark, narrow face and a familiar pair of green-gold eyes.

"Hey, Joe, whaddya know?" she said her voice trembling slightly from the shock of it all.

"I had heard you had the misfortune to come upon a carcass in an alleyway," he said as she tried to step around him. "Shall I see you to your door, Cecie?"

"It's only a coupled hundred feet to the hotel door; I think I can manage," she said. Joe's smile of mischievous insistence fell. "Well, I had a bad fright, so maybe I really do need the company."

"If only to drive away they shadows of fear," he said offering her his arm. She took it and let him lead her to the Graceley.

She let down her guard enough to permit him to accompany her up the stairs to her suite on the third floor.

Once she got in, she put on the teakettle to boil; Joe hovered in the doorway of her closet of a kitchenette, hands in pockets, eyes watching her movements.

"I still sense tension in you," he observed. She almost jumped on hearing his soft, husky voice behind her. She laughed at her own nervousness.

"You're absolutely right," she said.

He stepped away from the doorpost. "Shall I relieve you of it? You said yourself that my touch could drive away the ills of the heart."

"Well, okay," she said. She sat down sideways on a chair, leaning forward slightly, elbows on knees, forearms folded.

Joe knelt behind her, rubbing his palms together for a few seconds. He set to work, massaging the back of her neck, the sides, the angle of her neck and shoulder, the flank of her shoulders, first the front, then the back, then down along her spine. His fingers moved slowly, digging into her flesh with just the right amount of pressure, pinching and kneading ever so gently yet so firmly, with enough force that she felt the tension ooze from her flesh and dissipate. She sighed, leaning her shoulders into his hands.

The teakettle started chuffing, preparatory to chattering in a full boil. Joe's hands slid up her back, past her collarbone and undid the second button of her blouse; she felt so relaxed she hardly noticed what he was up to, until he lowered his face to the back of her neck and kissed her. She turned on him; he smiled at her with mischievous innocence.

"Quit that!" she cried. "I thought we had an agreement: no undoing of buttons. I haven't undone any of yours, so don't you go undoing mine."

"Your neck begged for another kind of massage; there was no other way to release the tensions in it," he said, half innocent, half earnestly passionate.

She got up and switched off the kettle. She filled her cup and left it to steep.

"You have not yet told me what brought you into that alleyway at such an hour of the night as this."

"I was trying to get out of the wind, but I guess I ended up stumbling on something worse than a cold wind."

"But you came away from it intact."

"Yeah, I just wish that poor Mecha was so lucky. Did you see him? Did you know him?"

"Yes, I saw his face as the security guards carried him away. His name was Carlos, a newer model, a Latino, very much the macho type, yet he could be tender in a fierce manner of tenderness."

"You knew him?"

He spread his hands slightly. "I know him only for a brief time he belonged to another agency, but our paths crossed and recrossed from time to time."

"And now he's gone."

"We pass in and out of each other's world like leaves blown on the wind pass in and out through a doorway. It is best to enjoy to the fullest the time we can know and share together."

"I would like to have known him—just enough to know what we'll be missing."

Joe lifted his chin with mild disdain. "You would not have liked him. Have you not said you prefer the sensitive artist types of men?"

"Yeah, but I'd like to have known him—as a comparison. This world needs all kinds."

He looked at her in earnest. "But does it need those who would destroy others?"

"No, but evil happens. It's a mystery none of us can understand: why does evil happen?"

"Why does it happen?"

"I'd like to thing it happens so that we can better appreciate the good."

He took this in silence, processing it, turning the data over and over in his logic centers. She could almost hear them humming. She took the tea bag from her cup and mixed honey into the tea before she sat down across from him again. He looked up to her face as she did so.

He put out his hand and clasped her free hand in both of his.

"Do you appreciate me?"

She down her cup and covered his hand with hers. "Yes, Joe, you know that."

"I do know it, but it needs to be reiterated, does it not?"

"Yes."

He smiled and raised her hands to his lips.

A sharp electronic chirp broke through the stillness. He released her hands and reached for the medallion pager hanging around his neck.

"So soon?" Cecie asked as he rose; she walked with him to the door.

"You know that I mustn't keep a lady waiting," he said.

"I know, I'm sorry. I'm just all shaken from this," she said.

"Shall I return here afterward?" He put his hand on her arm.

"No, thanks, I'll be all right," she said. She slipped her arms around him, under his jacket, where she could feel the soft warmth radiating from his body as she held him close. He caressed her shoulders with both hands. "Take care of yourself, Joe. If you see anything suspicious, you run as fast as you can. Come back to me tomorrow."

"I shall return to you with the sunlight." He let her go and opened the door. He winked to her and swung through. He started to close the door behind him, but she held it open as he stepped out into the hallway.

She watched him swagger down the hall to the head of the stairs. He put his hand on the balustrade and leaped down the stairs taking them two and three and even four at a bound. Only when he leaped out of sight did she close the door. She leaned her forehead on it. She breathed deeply, trying to get her heart to stop beating so hard.

He took the spiraling staircases down to the Lower Deck, keeping his path in the shadows along the walls, avoiding the frequented areas civilized by the light. The men in the rent-a-cop uniforms had not seen him leaving the alleyway or they might have become suspicious of the stains on his clothes.

The boss would be pleased with the shots he'd gotten on this first night.

To be continued…


	2. October 22, 2159

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +J.M.J.+

+J.M.J.+

The Shadows between the Neon

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

BRR! Combine reading the last chapters of _'Salem's Lot_ with eating a bowl of mixed mocha chip/vanilla almond/cherry chocolate chip ice cream and add a frigid New England October night, and you have a recipe for the shivers. Hopefully some of the shivers have rubbed off on this chapter. Two special notes on Rouge City as I envision it: Some people have speculated that it might really be Philadelphia or Camden after Las Vegas bought it out (Spielberg said something to this effect), but I see it as a whole new urban area on the East Pennsylvania side of the Delaware, slightly northwest of Camden, which neither state really wants to claim, making it a separate urban enclave, sort of like what Washington, D.C. is to Maryland. And also, I imagine this makes it hard for the city to have a regular police force, which means the city has, in effect, a whole system of rent-a-cops in its employ.

Disclaimer:

See Chapter I.

II: October 22nd, 2159

Albany _Times-Herald_ , 23 September, 2159 pg. 3

FIFTEEN INJURED BY MECHA IN STABBING SPREE

Nova Francisco (AP): Police are searching for a male Mecha, possibly a lover model, responsible for stabbing fifteen people in Conforti's restaurant on Fulton Ave. in Nova Francisco last night. Restaurant manager Rob Conforti says the Mecha came into the restaurant about 20.00 p.m., seeking shelter from a torrential rainstorm. "It seemed edgy-like, suspicious, like it was looking for some one or something," Conforti told the police. "I kept an eye on it, just to see no trouble started, for it or for anyone else."

A half hour later, a college student, 22-year old Nichelle Terkel, approached the Mecha and started teasing it. "She [Terkel] wasn't really hitting on it," Conforti reported. "But she was acting like she was interested in it, though you could tell she was doing it just to annoy it." The Mecha became enraged and attacked the girl with a small knife it had hidden in a compartment in its right forearm. Several patrons and members of the waitstaff tried to appease the two, but the were also stabbed in the confrontation.

The Mecha fled the premises by breaking out a window and jumping through it. Police were unable to capture it: it is described as a possible Companionates model JO-4679, about five foot ten, medium build, dark hair. Distinguishing marks include a long scar across the right cheek. However, police stress caution and urge the public not to approach this Mecha: it is armed and extremely dangerous.

Rouge City _Broadsheet_ , pg 36, column 4, bottom

MECHA FOUND DAMAGED IN ALLEYWAY BEHIND CASINO

Rouge City—Security guards Bob Stanger, Leslie Tiessen, Tyler Mackey, and Kinnon Regers responded to a call from the Bleu Fairy Escort Service that one of their Mechas had been severely damaged, possibly intentionally. A copy writer found the Mecha, a Sidekicks C-09328, commonly known as "Carlos", in an alleyway behind WildCards, a casino on 12th Street when she was walking home from running some errands…

From: HeroicReporter23

To: RougeCityCecie , KPLangier

Subject: Frank is back in town

Brace yourselves, denizens of Sin City, USA: Frankie and Bernie are coming into town on the 19.30 Albany monorail. Tell you more tonight.

Frank S.

At twenty-five past nineteen, Kip, Cecie, and Joe sat on the platform of the Rouge City monorail, waiting for the 19.30 Albany-Camden-Rouge City train to show up.

"Did Frank tell you they just filed for their pregnancy license?" Kip told them.

"Indeed!" Joe said, his nostrils curled slightly as if he didn't wholly approve of the idea.

"He didn't tell me when I was typing to him last night," Cecie said. "How are they going to get it now that Frank lost the job in Albany?"

"Good question: the Board is still hemming and hawing over our application, and I own my own business."

"What about the job offer Flyte got for you?"

"Phila wouldn't hear of it when I said it was welding Mecha infrastructures for a company that does lover models, even after I told her they do a lot of other types."

"She has yet remained narrow of heart?" Joe asked.

"'Fraid so, fella; not even moving here to Rouge City has got the New England puritan out of her," Kip said.

"Might not be so bad: this place could use a little contrast," Cecie said.

The headlamps of the monorail pierced the darkness at the end of the track; the train inched along the rail to the station with a decelerating whirr.

The sliding doors opened and a scattering of people emerged onto the track, including a young couple, a tall, dark man with green eyes, and a small woman with golden brown hair.

Bernie had still had some of the little girl look about her face and figure when she had married Frank last year, but she had shot up a couple inches and filled out slightly. She still didn't quite meet your gaze squarely, but she didn't keep her head screwed down between her shoulder blades the way she had two years before, when she first came to Rouge City..

Frank helped her down from the train; he had changed as well: his hair looked neater and his face more carefully shaven, but he looked thinner than before, almost thinner than Joe. But he accompanied Bernie almost as if she were a queen.

Joe peered over Cecie's shoulder toward Bernie; he glanced away, then glanced at Bernie again, almost as if he were doing a double-take.

"Could that exquisite creature be she? Is that radiant young woman the shy Bernadette?" he asked, awe-struck.

Kip stepped forward, meeting his brother-in-law and his wife's sister halfway.

"Hello, Frank!"

"Hiya, Kip."

"How you doing?"

"Oh, I'll be doing better once I get another job, but we're holding up. How about you?"

"I have my good days and my not-so-good days, but I just roll with the punches."

"Hey there, Cecie!"

"Hello, Frank."

"You been staying out of trouble?"

"I've been _trying_ to, but it finds me anyway."

"Where's Phila?" Bernie asked.

"She's home cooking supper," Kip said. "Wow, Bernie! You look great; what did you do?"

"It's nothing I've done," she said modestly.

"You have the look all women do when they have found and been claimed by their true lover," Joe said. Cecie heard an edge of resignation to his voice.

"That's true," Bernie admitted, slipping an arm around Frank's waist.

The five of them walked to the apartment where Kip and Phila had lived with Irene till she passed away just a few months before.

Kip had set an artificial jack o' lantern in the window with an electric candle inside it and fake cobwebs festooned around it. A string of orange icicle lights hung from the overhang of the upper story. Kip opened the front door and let them all enter first.

The front room was already decked out with strings of silk leaves in autumn colors—orange, golden yellow, scarlet, russet, tan, maroon—high up near the ceiling and hanging from the corners of the room to the chandelier in the middle of the ceiling. A small vase of silk maple leaves stood before the painting of the Sacred Heart over a shelf at the head of the room.

Kip led them into the kitchen-dining room, where Phila was setting the table: six chairs, but only five settings. On a shelf of the dresser stood an eerily realistic-looking plastic skull; next to it stood its metallic counterpart, the titanium cranium of a Mecha.

"Ooh, what's that?" Frank asked, mock squeamishly.

"One of my Halloween decorations," Kip said.

Joe eyed the Mecha skull warily. His gaze turned to Kip's face.

"And may I ask how you came to obtain…this object?" he asked, delicately.

"Don't worry your processors, Joe; no Mechas were harmed in the obtaining of this skull," Kip said. "I picked it up from a parts store in Camden."

"Hello, Phila," Bernie said.

"Bernie, Hello!" the two sisters hugged each other. "You look different."

"Good or bad?"

"At the risk of making you proud, you look good."

Bernie blushed. "Thanks."

"So how did it happen that you lost the job?" Kip asked Frank, once they had gathered in the kitchen; Joe sat on Cecie's right on a chair turned back to front.

"The Albany _Times_ combined with another Albany paper, the _Herald_ , so now it's the Albany _Times-Herald_. They had to let a lot of reporters go, and unfortunately I was one of 'em," Frank said.

"So, I guess the paper folded," Cecie said.

Frank grinned. "You got it, Cecie. For now, we've been scrimping on my unemployment."

"I sold a few sweaters I knitted," Bernie added hopefully.

"So Cecie found you a job with the _Broadsheet_?" Kip asked.

"She 'may' have found me a job: I'm going in for an interview tomorrow."

Phila served up the meal, simple but wholesome: chicken stew and fresh baked rolls she'd made herself.

"So have any of you been following the news about the trouble with the Mecha over in North California?" Frank asked.

"We'd heard about the people who got stabbed," Kip said. "Why, is there more?"

"Unfortunately, yeah. Five people got strangled in Omaha, Nebraska a day later. The police think it may have been the same Mecha, he just moved east."

"Did you hear about the Mecha that got destroyed last night?" Cecie asked.

"That's a new one to me," Frank said.

"Should you really be talking about this?" Phila asked. "It only happened last night; you said you saw it."

Joe put a comforting hand on Cecie's arm; she patted his hand in gratitude.

"I gotta talk about it," Cecie said. "Last night, I was walking home from the cybercafé after I was IM'ing Frank; I took a shortcut down an alleyway to get out of the wind."

"You shouldn't have been walking there anyway," Bernie said.

"That's what I told her this morning when we met up after Mass," Phila said. "I knew something was wrong: her face was as white as a sheet."

"C'mon, let Cecie tell her story," Kip said.

"I was almost to the end, onto 12th Street, when I tripped on something on the ground. At first I thought it was a drunk or an addict or some homeless person. But I looked down and saw he was a Mecha."

"Maybe we don't want to know."

"It was pretty bad, but it wasn't the worst. He was dead, damaged, destroyed, whatever you want to call it. Someone or something had torn open his chest. So I called his owner and they sent over a tech, plus they called in the security guards."

"Did you see anyone suspicious-looking?" Frank asked.

"No, nothing. He felt really cold to the touch, so I guessed he'd been lying there for quite a while."

"Probably someone's husband destroyed it," Phila said.

"Or a disgruntled customer did it," Kip added.

"Or someone's husband," Frank suggested.

"Frank!" Phila cried.

Frank shrugged. "I did an interview once for a tabloid section about a woman who found some unfamiliar men's underwear in her bedroom. At first she suspected her daughter was sneaking the boyfriend into the house, but it turned out to be someone else's boyfriend."

"Whose?" Phila asked.

"Her husband's."

"That's awful! I hope she got power of attorney over him and put him in a psychiatric ward," Phila said.

"They started going to a family counselor, but that was the last I heard about them; this was one of my more recent interviews. Someone else got the follow-up."

"It was probably just as well," Bernie said.

Yes, so the husband won't be hitting on Frank," Phila said.

"No, worse, the wife was hitting on me," Frank groaned.

"Ouch, I could see why that would be worse," Kip said.

"Now why would it be worse for a woman to be hitting on Frank?" Phila asked.

"Duuuhh, I'm straight. If a guy hits on me, I'm just gonna say, 'Sorry, pal, I don't do my own kind'," Frank said. "But if a woman hits on me, it's harder to tell her no, since I might be getting too interested."

"So what's Frank's chance of getting the job?" Phila asked Cecie, changing the subject.

"Highly likely," Cecie replied. "I told Finkelsteen, the chief editor, so he's aware of Frank already."

"Greasing the skids for me, eh?" Frank grinned. "Good work."

"How well does Finkelsteen know you?" Kip asked Cecie.

"I've written a few odds and end for the paper, so I'm a familiar face to him. He actually offered me the job, so I told him I knew a guy who was better suited for it."

"Wonder if my old buddy Hal McGeever will try to get the job," Frank said.

"I hope he doesn't," Bernie said. "If we're ever in Albany again, let's stay in a tent in the park instead of Hal's apartment."

"Why, what happened?" Cecie asked.

"I'd better tell the whole story," Frank said. "As you know, we stayed in Hal's apartment in Albany when we were apartment hunting; Hal worked for the _Herald_ and they'd sent him up to Montreal to cover the hackers' convention up there. So Bernie goes to hang up her things in the closet, though I told her not to." Frank started laughing so hard he had to stop talking. "You tell it, Bern."

"I opened the door, and there's this female Mecha in there that looked just like the one Diocletian had," she continued.

"I told Bernie not to go in there, but it came a little late," Frank added, recovering.

"I trust she was not immobilized with a restraining bolt," Joe asked.

"No, he had her shut down."

"Does Peter know anything about your coming here to find work?" Phila asked.

"If he does, I'm afraid he has no say on where I get work," Frank said. "Man's gotta take the job he gets sometimes."

"But why work for that paper in this town?"

"It needs a little new life in it; Frank could handle that," Kip said.

"But that's just it," Bernie said. "I don't know as if I want to live here."

"We could always live downstream in Philadelphia," Frank said. "At least the crime rate is lower here."

"We only had one murder recently," Cecie said.

"Who's to say it couldn't happen again?" said Bernie. "Besides, wasn't it only a Mecha that got destroyed?"

Joe wrinkled his nostrils and looked away primly. " _Only_ a Mecha? If you are of a faith that values life, it would appear that you would respect all life, even that which is only virtual life."

Later, Cecie walked home in Joe's company. The escalators were hardly crowded. She found her hand creeping over to take Joe's hand in hers. He covered it with his free one.

"You hand has grown cold," he observed, caressing it with his palm. She sensed her hand warming as his skin grew warmer. She shivered inside her coat; she should have put the lining in: the cold needled through the simuleather, pricking her skin. "Shall I come up to your chamber and shield you from the cold?" He leaned closer to her, shielding her. "I have as yer, no other clients this night, as I do most Sunday nights."

She held his clasped hands in hers. "I know you mean well, but I'll have to turn you down."

"Why refuse me when you know you shall feel the cold?"

"I can turn up the heat in my room, and I was going to make myself a cup of tea."

"So you would throw me over for a baseboard heater?" He retracted his hand from her arm. "It is your decision and I must respect it."

The wind grew stronger as they rose to the outlet of the shaft. Joe helped her up as they glided to solid ground, but she sensed that his skin temperature had dropped slightly.

He walked slightly behind her, as they walked back to the Graceley, his body taking the brunt of the cold wind. Loose papers and fallen leaves scudded across the pavement at their feet. The hollow wash of the wind in their ears seemed to drown out the raucous jazz and the backbeat from the clubs, which seemed less noisy, less frenetic than usual. Cecie swore she could hear the stillness that the noise generally muffled. Only a few people passed them by on the streets.

She unconsciously reached back and drew Joe closer, more for protection than anything else: to protect him and to seek his shelter.

She looked behind her: he was already looking back. He lengthened his stride slightly; she walked a little quicker.

"What did you hear?" she asked.

"I heard footsteps but I could see no one," he said.

"They might have been the echoes of our footsteps," she said.

"No, they were not: I know the sound of yours, and this sound did not resemble them."

They quick-walked into the Graceley. Cecie let him come into her room with her; she set to work making herself a cup of tea.

"Bernadette had blossomed from Franks care for her," he noted.

"And you're challenging me to imagine what she'd be like if you'd been allowed to do the same for her," Cecie countered, trying to sound twitting and biting at the same time.

"Have you read my brain?"

"No, I just know you still have those wicked little thoughts about her. Better drop 'em, Joe; if Frank catches you trying to play pat-hands with his wife, he'll rip your processors out."

"He could not harm me."

"You wanna find out the hard way? Just try making a play for Bernie."

"She only has eyes for Frank now. She did not avoid my face nor my eyes, but she did not gaze upon them." He moved in closer to her. "She has found her satisfaction in Frank's arms. But you…yes, you are jealous. That jealousy has not left you: you have only concealed it, hidden it in your bosom where it has been sucking the life from you." He inched closer still, leaning across the table, his face calm, but the fire in his eyes kindling. "Let me release you from this deathlock."

The kettle chattered on the stove. She started up, but he gripped her wrist. She tensed her wrist tendons as he did so. They stood locked thus for a moment. He relaxed his hold just a trifle. She slid her hand free and went to get the kettle.

As she turned back from preparing her tea, she nearly let out a yelp: Joe stood in the doorway, blocking her path with his arms against the doorposts.

"So you have decided to play at coldness," he said, with amused ardor.

She raised her mug to shoulder level. "If you don't get out of the way, I am going to pour this tea on you."

He stepped out of her way dutifully, but she saw his eyes follow her out of the corners of her own.

"You're wearing out your welcome," she said.

"Perhaps you have only let the welcoming fires go out in your heart."

"It's the wrong time of the month for me," she said.

"I have heard that excuse rendered before," he said. He leaned down close to her, and flaring his nostrils, drew in a long draft of air. "You have passed the point when your desires should start to return after the lull."

"You can read me like a book," she said, reaching for her datascriber as she sat down on the windowseat.

Joe sat on the floor, leaning his head against her shin, eyeing her around the edge of the scriber.

"What creative labors occupy you?"

"It's kind of a vampire story—and no, you can't help me with the research by biting me on the neck," she said.

"I did not think of that," he said.

He suddenly put his hand on her right wrist. "But perhaps it might prove doubly useful to you."

She pinned the scriber to her thighs with her right hand. She lowered her left hand as if to brace herself, but with her wrist, she knocked the mug off the windowseat, into his lap.

He leaped to his feet, letting out a painful yelp. He turned to her, his brows knit, his lower lip thrust out.

"You could not have made it any more obvious," he said coldly. "But even as this hot tea burns me, may your desire for me melt your icy heart."

His face had relaxed: he gave her a slow wink as he went out.

She turned to raise her eyes from the scriber when she heard the door close.

Next day, at 8.30 Mass, Cecie noticed Frank was there, with Bernie and the Langiers. After Mass, the Langiers left, but Frank lingered, lighting a candle each before the statues of St. Jude and of St. Joseph.

"No patron saints for writers?" he asked Cecie when they were outside.

"No, but we got St. Mary Magdalen," she said. Frank looked as if he'd shaved before he'd gone to bed, and then again when he got up. He'd made some effort to comb back his hair, and she could tell he'd gone over his gray suit with a clothes brush. "So, where are you off to?"

"I've got an interview with Everett Finkelsteen in about," he checked his wristwatch, "Fifteen minutes."

"You get going: better to be a little early," Bernie said, straightening the lapels of his tan overcoat. "I'll be praying for you."

"I'll need it," Frank said. He leaned down to kiss Bernie, then he scurried off, heading deeper into the City.

"Have you had breakfast yet?" Cecie asked Bernie.

"No, not yet."

"I'll treat you," Cecie said, and lead her along Main Boulevard to Broad Way, to Arabica's, a small coffee shop.

"Why do I have a feeling you don't want Frank to get this job here in the city?" Cecie asked over fruit and sweet rolls.

Bernie toyed with half a strawberry on her plate. "I don't want Frank to get led astray."

"He has you now; he's only trying to support you and his child, once you get your license."

"But does he have to get a job here of all places? I've seen the ads in the back of the _Broadsheet_."

"They can get pretty R-rated, but I've seen them just as bad in the back of the New Boston _Herald_. Just stay away from them."

"I don't want Frank to get tempted."

"He hasn't got the job yet, and besides, you don't have to live in the City: you could live in Camden and he could commute here, or you could live on the Lower Deck. If you're really that uncomfortable, maybe I should introduce you to the pastor over at Our Lady of the Immaculate Heart, Father Nick Crawford."

"You mean the priest who said the Mass today? He doesn't look like, you know, a very respectable sort of man."

"I know, the gelled-back hair makes him look kind of like a Hollywood procurer. But he's a thorough gentleman."

"He looks like he might be…you know, not exactly normal…I mean, you know…"

"He looks like he might be homosexual?"

"Yes."

"He had a few difficulties with that a few years ago. He actually took an extended leave from active service as a priest to figure out what he wanted to do. But he decided that serving God's outcasts was what he was sent here to do. He works in a homeless shelter and a drug rehab clinic across the river in Philadelphia."

"He could just be using that as a mask…but he gave a good sermon today."

"Why do I have a funny feeling you're using your concern for Frank as a mask for your real feelings?"

"What do you mean?" Bernie asked, innocently."

"I mean, you're really afraid you're going to have another crush on Joe, or that he's going to make another play for you."

Bernie put down her fork and clasped her hands in her lap.

"I take that gesture to mean 'yes'," Cecie said in a fair imitation of Joe's husky tenor. Bernie shivered. In her own voice, Cecie added, "If there's anyone who has to worry about that, it's me."

Bernie looked up. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I fell in love with Joe."

"Have you…you know…?"

"I slept on the same bed with him, both of us fully clothed, but that's as far as it went and as far as it will go."

"I certainly hope so. What happened?"

"Joe got it into his processors that I want more of him, especially since he had a faulty chip removed, he's been incorrigible. I had to pour hot tea over him last night to get him to knock it off."

"Good. But, uh, I hope you didn't burn him."

"He's made of tough stuff." She kept to herself, 'You sound a little worried about the artificial inamorato.'

"I found out I've got competition already," Frank said when the six of them gathered for supper that night.

"Anyone we know?" Kip asked.

"Yeah, if you remember Hal McGeever from the wedding reception: short guy, skinny, dark hair, balding, bad teeth, hung around the bar most of the time. Tossed off an incredible amount of liquor and didn't get drunk."

Bernie shook her head. "He doesn't sound familiar, but maybe I don't want to remember."

"Yeah, I remember him: he tried to make a pass at me," Cecie said.

"And this obliged me to step in and remind him, by word and example, how a gentleman treats a lady," Joe said.

"Maybe we should placate him a little, invite him to dinner," Bernie suggested.

"Yeah, that's a good idea. Either you'd poison him and get rid of him, or it'll give him such a bellyache that he'll be out of commission for a while," Frank said. "But if you do, make sure you cook plenty."

"Why?"

"This guy barely eats most of the time, but when he can get a free feed, he puts away enough for two guys his size. I don't know where he puts it all, must have a hollow leg: he's about five foot even and weighs all of ninety pounds hungry. Rest of the time he practically starves himself so he can pay for his addiction."

Bernie's eyes got big. "And what's he addicted to?"

Frank looked at Joe out of the corner of his eye for a second. "He's a sex addict. I mean, worse than me at my lowest, _way_ worse. This guy did everything: women, men, Orgas, Mechas, animals, trees, rocks, garbage cans. I remember when I was sharing an apartment with him when we both worked in Chicago, he used to gross me out with some of his stunts. And I never knew what I was going to walk in and find him with next."

"Oyyy," Cecie groaned.

"Don't let Phila hear that," Kip said.

Too late, Phila walked into the kitchen; from the withering look on her slightly green face, she'd clearly heard everything.

"And you lived in the same apartment with him?" Phila asked her brother-in-law. "Were you queer at the time."

"Careful, Philomena," Kip warned.

"Nah, people asked me that back then, I told them the truth: I was helping him with the rent."

"I guess you shouldn't have mentioned Hal last night," Cecie said.

"Yeah, if you don't want to catch the devil's attention, don't speak of him by name," Frank said.

"How did you find out Hal's trying to get the job?" Bernie asked.

"I saw his resume on Finkelsteen's desk," Frank said. "I sent mine in first, so I'm still ahead of Hal."

"Well, if he's as bad as you say, maybe it's better if _you_ get the job," Bernie said.

"And this morning you told me you didn't want me to get the job," Frank said.

At that moment, the lights in the room blinked. Bernie and Frank looked at Kip.

"What's this?" Frank asked, looking up at the ceiling.

"Does that happen often?" Bernie demanded.

"No, the city has the best wind and storm-proof power system," Kip said. "And that's a must down here in the Lower Deck."

"Yeah, and to keep all that neon lighting upstairs glowing, sendin' out the beacon: 'The silicon babes and boys are HERE!'"

Bernie slugged her husband none too playfully.

When Cecie and Joe reached the Upper Deck, a light rain added its dampness to the icy gusts of wind. Cecie had brought the umbrella and put it up, but Joe insisted on holding it for her. He drew her to his side to keep her under the shelter, but she held her body away from him under her coat.

The rain had thinned the crowd more than usual. But Cecie sensed something that did not belong in the shadows. She kept looking back, over her shoulder. Joe glanced behind them as well.

"Do you hear something?" she asked. They both stopped walking.

Another set of footsteps clacked wetly on the polymer pavement. The sound faded into the spatter of raindrops.

Joe gripped Cecie's arm and hurried her along, up Main Boulevard, from one pool of neon and street light to the next.

Joe suddenly drew her back, as if from the edge of a precipice.

Something lay across the wide sidewalk. He tried to lead her around it, but she stopped and knelt beside it.

A male figure lay in a puddle of what she thought was water, but which she realized by the oily smell was a mixture of water and oil and hydraulic fluid. His skin was as pale as alabaster or white marble; he would have stood taller than Joe and he had the shoulders of a linebacker. Someone had slashed his throat open, his voice synthesizer lay torn out on the ground next to him. A tube in his throat still leaked fluid onto the ground.

Joe fanned out his left hand over the dead Mecha's face. Blue white lights glowed along the insides of his fingers, reflected onto the waxy, rough-chiseled features.

"Do you know him?" Cecie asked.

"It is…it was Drew. We were made new at about the same season. We had our trials together."

"An old friend?"

"You might say that."

"I'm sorry." She dug in the damaged figure's trouser pocket and dug out the address card sewn into it. Then she reached into her pocket for her cellphone.

The security guards and the techs came, setting up a shelter over the crime scene.

"Did you see anyone walking or running away from the site?" one of the guards, Stanger from the other night, asked Cecie.

"No, but we heard footsteps," Cecie said.

"There were a few people nearby, you probably heard them.

"They weren't ordinary footsteps, they sounded too regular, and they were close to the walls, really quiet, like someone who doesn't want to be heard."

"Where were you earlier this evening, Miss Martin?"

One of the techs finished scanning the internal clock of the dead Mecha. "His last visuals were at 20.10, it's 20.40 now."

"I was downstairs in the Lower Deck, having dinner with Kip and Phila Langier, Number 12A, on AA Street," Cecie said. "Joe was with me."

"Are you holding her in suspicion?" Joe asked.

"It's a little odd, Miss Martin. This is the second destroyed Mecha in three days, and both times we find you on the crime scene," the guard said. "We'll check your story out: till then, and till we scan his cube, don't leave town."

He'd had to slip into the shadows. The dark girl and the JO-4679 had come upon the latest incident. The girl might have noticed him, but the JO-4679 might have seen him and noted the stains on his clothes, then blabbed it to the girl. He'd have to work quicker next time, but the DR-8726 had put up a fight he hadn't counted on…

To be continued…

Afterword:

The rating begins to climb in the next chapter; I hope this doesn't decide to go into NC-17 territory (for violence), because it will mean having to post the rest of this on the Yahoo Group "AI_Fanfiction". I have nothing against NC-17 rated stuff as long as it isn't a lot of pointless smut or gore; one of my favorite books, _King of Kings_ , a novel based on the life of King David of Israel, was written by a very upright and holy Catholic priest, the late Father Malachi Martin, and some of the content puts it right in NC-17 territory (especially one scene with the prophet Samuel hacking one of the enemies of Israel to pieces—eeyyyuuuucckkkkk! And the scene with King David and Bathsheba left very little to the imagination.). You have been warned.


	3. October 24, 2159

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +J.M.J.+

+J.M.J.+

The Shadows Between the Neon

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:  
I tossed this off rather quickly, and at the same time, I finished typing up an ancient _Matrix_ song fic I had sitting on my hard drive, taking up space, driving me mad, like a splinter in my mind… I went to Connecticut for the weekend, so I didn't have time to get another chapter of _Zenon Eyes: Eyes of Truth_ out this week, ('I love you…don't kill me.') but next week, I'll do better.

Anyone who's really been paying attention to this series (I have yet to come up with as catchy a name for it as "Zenon Eyes") will notice that I fouled up the spelling of Hal McGeever's name: In "One of THOSE in our Midst!" he was mentioned a couple times as "Hal McKeever", but now we have a mild continuity problem. I've settled on "McGeever" as the correct spelling; it also shows off some of Hal's creative pedigree, since the character was thinly inspired from a publicity shot of Jude Law as Harlan McGuire in _Road to Perdition_ (he looks decidedly nasty and I almost barely recognized him, but there's something to be said for a guy who still looks attractive even when he's supposed to look beat up) and the names are more phonetically similar this way. I may go back and re-post some of the chapters of "One of THOSE…!" to fix this annoying !spoO that crept in (I know, I should have a beta reader, but the one guy who might do it takes fooorrrrreeeeevvvveeeerrrr to finish stuff). And then, I started reading Stephen King's _The Shining_ , and found that one of the characters is named Halloran (Hal's full first name), although the two characters have absolutely nothing in common. Weird. But it's fitting since Hal is such a weird character. You get to meet him in this chapter. He's to blame for the rating going up, although he wants to push it through ff.n's rating ceiling. For mature readers: I may be posting alternate, less censored versions of later chapters of this on the Yahoo Group "AI_Fanfiction", available through Laurie E. Smith's site.

Disclaimer:

See chapter 1.

3 October 24, 2159

From _Who's Who in American Journalism_ , 178th Edition, 2159

McGeever, Halloran "Hal"

Born December 29 [?], 2128, St. Paul, MN. High school: Parkhurst Gentlemen's Seminary, Albany, N.Y. College: University of Saskatchewan, Canada, class of 2151. Bachelor's degree in Journalism and News Photography. Photojournalist for: Des Moines _Trumpet_ , 2151-2152; Chicago _Tablet_ , 2152-5; Detroit _Star_ , 2155; New Boston _Herald_ , 2156-2157; Albany _Times_ , 2158-.

Known for an especially "hard-edged" style of photography, almost art-like in execution, but better known for photographing controversial subjects, particularly his stark portrayal of the injured in the 2153 uprising in Beijing, China.

Albany _Times-Herald,_ September 24, 2159

Mecha Throttles Five in Nightclub

Omaha, NE. (AP) Five people were throttled by a possibly malfunctioning male Mecha, believed to be a lover-model, in Diamonds, a nightclub on Portland Street last night after Stephane Phuong, a local college student tried to approach it.

"It [the Mecha] was sticking to the shadows of a booth in the back," says Victor "Tic" D'Onofrion, the club manager. "I was just approaching it to tell it to leave since we have three lover Mechas working the floor…" At the same time, Phuong came up and asked the Mecha if it had any clients that night. "It looked at the young man with this utterly wild look in its eye, like a rabid dog. It told him to back off, or words to that effect." When Phuong did not leave the Mecha alone, it jumped up and tried to strangle the 23-year-old robotics engineer with its bare hands. A waitress, Donna McLachlan, and her brother Karl Reiner, the club's bouncer, tried to separate the two, but the Mecha attacker Reiner before turning on Mrs. McLachlan. Two club patrons tried to assist Reiner, but the Mecha attacked them as well. All five were rushed to local hospitals with non-life threatening injuries.

Police tried to subdue the Mecha, but it fled out the back door of the club. They were able to get a description of the Mecha, which matched the description of Mecha responsible for stabbing several people in Nova Francisco yesterday […]

The Mecha may be trying to flee north over the Canadian border.

Cecie was just heading out to rent a 2-D vid that evening when the phone rang in her room.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Cecie! It's me, Frank."

"Ah, long time, no hear from. What's up?"

"More like what's down: Hal McGeever just arrived in Sin City, USA. I met him upstairs this afternoon: he'd just got the job."

"Uh oh! That doesn't sound good."

"It is and it isn't: Finkelsteen hired him as a photographer and me as a reporter-writer, so we're gonna be working together. Kinda like the old days when he and I were working together in Chicago. It'll be better for him this way, I can keep him focused."

"If he's anything like you say he is, he'd have a hard time sticking to his work."

"Yeah, he was a little mad when I met up with him: he'd been in the city only three hours and he was dying for a poke.

"But to cut to the chase: we're celebrating; we're having dinner here tonight about nineteen o'clock. You're welcome to join us, unless you had plans."

"As a matter of fact, I didn't, but I'll be along…about seven, did you say?"

"Heavy on the _about_ : be prepared for the guest of honor to be late. He might find a good piece of silicon and get himself sidetracked in a little dark corner."

"I can manage that: count me in."

"Oh, uh, one last thing: I'd be careful about bringing Joe along: Hal might get a little curious and that might get Phila's skirts in a knot…maybe Bernie's too, since she had a crush on the robot who looks like me."

"I can take care of that if Hal tries anything funny, and I think Joe could blow him off just as easily."

"Okay, but I warned you—geez."

"What?"

"Flyte must love you for hiring out Joe."

"Actually, he's given Joe the order to let it be on the house if I'm short of cash."

"Grrrrr, Hal would loooovvvve to be in your shoes."

"No, he wouldn't, because I don't do anything."

"Might be good for him, though, to see someone who's mastered the fine arts of just being friends with one of _those_."

Cecie dismissed a temptation to say, 'There's more than meets the eye with Joe and I.'

Cecie and Joe arrived at the Langiers at five to nineteen. The clammy drizzle of the night before had turned to a cold downpour and the wind made using umbrellas almost impossible. At least it was drier on the Lower Deck, but they could still hear the clatter of rain and the steady gurgle in the ductwork overhead and pouring down the ducts along the huge concrete supports of the Upper Deck.

Hal hadn't arrived by the time they reached the Langiers' door; Frank let them in. Bernie and Phila, who were setting the table, both wore higher collared blouses than usual and their skirts dragged on the floor. Cecie somewhat cavalierly wore a maroon blouse over a black simuleather skirt with a side split up to her mid-thigh and black leggings under that.

"I don't mean to criticize how you're dressed, Cecie, but are you sure Hal won't get too…interested in you?" Phila asked Cecie.

"From what Frank told me about Hal, I think you could be bundled up to the eyes the way women in the Middle East had to until the middle of the last century, and Hal would still find you a desirous object," Cecie said, as Joe helped her take off her trenchcoat.

"A woman who artfully conceals the charms of her body often incites more desire than a woman who does not," Joe commented. "Men start to wonder what treasures she has concealed."

"Well, Hal wouldn't want to see much of Bernie and I," Phila said.

Joe smiled innocently, lowering his eyelids. "I would beg to differ with that statement until it has been proven otherwise. And even then, you would still possess your unique graces."

"You're hopeless," Phila said, going back to the stove.

"Thank you," Joe replied to her back, over his shoulder as he and Cecie returned to the front room.

Frank had perched himself on the sill of one of the front windows, careful to avoid Phila's ceramic scarecrow as he looked out, watching the street.

"So, you got the job, Frank?" Cecie asked.

"I've got it, but I'll be on probation for a few weeks. You hear about the Mecha that go destroyed last night?" Frank asked.

Cecie looked at Joe, then back to Frank. "We nearly tripped on the body," she said.

"Lucky for Cecie she was with me: I saw it in the shadows when she could not," Joe said.

"I called his owner, and then the security guards came along and started questioning me."

"They held her in utter suspicion when it is common knowledge she would never harm one of my species."

"They concluded it all by telling me not to leave town."

"Uh oh," Kip said. "Did you tell them where you were all last night?"

"Yeah, so don't be surprised if you hear from security pretty soon," Cecie concluded.

"Wonder if the _Broadsheet_ 'll have me covering this mysterious rash of Mecha murders," Frank said. "Hal would loooovvvve to do the photography for it. Much as I don't want him hedging on my turf—not that it's really mine—he'd be a good photographer for the paper."

"Why, does he specialize in the borderline lurid stuff?" Kip asked.

"Unfortunately, yeah, we were in Beijing during the uprisings and he had to get a dozen memory cards for his camera, he was getting shots of just about everything—including when that assassin gashed my neck."

"Ouch!" Kip cried. Joe cast a concerned eye on the base of Frank's neck.

"Sounds about right, the creep," Cecie said.

Frank looked out, over his shoulder. "Speak of the creep, here he comes." He got up and went to the door, paused a second and opening it, stepped out onto the sidewalk. Kip followed him, so did Cecie, with Joe at her side almost protectingly.

The welcoming committee stepped out onto the sidewalk.

A throaty whistle echoed off the walls of the buildings and the ceiling of the street.

"What's that tune?" Kip asked.

"Sounds like 'Mack the Knife'," Cecie said.

"Hey, you two-timing little runt, go home and wash behind your ears!" Frank cried to the outer darkness.

"Oh, go scrape the down off yer jaw, boy!" a grating, nasally sneer retorted from the nearer shadows.

A small man inside a huge overcoat sidled up to the door. The wide-brimmed homburg that covered his head tilted up and he peered up at them from under it. The top of his hat just leveled with Frank's chin.

"Hal."

"Frank." The two men clasped hands like prizefighters shaking hands. Frank threw his arm around Hal's scrawny shoulders and hugged him roughly. Hal slugged him between the ribs with his free hand; Frank grunted and they separated.

"The only thing better'n a good enemy is a good friend," Frank said.

"And the only thing better'n a good friend is a good enemy," Hal added. With a crooked grin that showed the gaps in his front teeth where some had been snapped off short, he continued, "Which must make me your best comrade in the world."

"After my wife and my brother in law," Frank said.

"Aw, you got me on third string?" Hal griped. "Damn you, Sweitz!"

"Third's better than not at all," Cecie said as Frank led Hal up to the door and over the threshold.

Hal regarded her sidelong with narrowed eyes that made her think of a snake's. He took off his hat, uncovering his head; he wore his drank brown hair cropped close to his skull, as if to conceal the thinning spots on the back and the way his hairline had receded. He looked up at her with his green-gray eyes narrowed appraisingly: she met his leer squarely.

"So what would you say to a little poke?" he asked.

"Hello, little poke," she said.

He jerked his thumb at her as he turned to Frank. "Don't tell me 'Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer'. I can't get started with this girl."

"You cannot get started with her because you are not supposed to get started with her," Joe said, stepping between Hal and Cecie as if to protect her.

"You again," Hal grumbled, with what was supposed to be irritation, but which came out sounding like growing interest. His narrow eyes closed down to slits, but a smirk of barely veiled pleasure twisted the corner of his too-thin mouth. He parted his lips and ran the tip of his grayish tongue over them, wetly. Joe took Hal's too attentive staring with a calm silence.

"Not in front of the ladies, Hal," Frank warned.

"We'll put that on pause, fella," Hal said, as Frank led the way into the kitchen

Phila and Bernie were setting the table as they all trooped in. Frank began the round of reacquaintance, starting with Bernie.

"Bernie, you remember Hal, don't you?"

"Oh, that was a year ago; I can't remember half the people who were at the reception," Bernie demurred, offering her hand to Hal.

He took it and smiled in a way he probably meant to be seductive, but the corner of his mouth rose too high. "You don't remember me, but I remember you—you mind if I call you Bernadette?"

"Well…okay," she said.

Phila didn't lift her eyes from the baking dish she carried from the stove to the table.

"I hope you haven't forgotten me too, Philomena?" Hal asked.

"You can call me Mrs. Langier," Phila said, keeping her eyes averted

"Oh, a formal lady, eh?" Hal said. Joe took a stance as if he might interpose between Hal and Phila, but Kip stepped in.

"So you're the other guy trying to get the job at the _Broadsheet_?" Kip asked.

"The other guy," Hal repeated, wagging one bony finger at Kip. "I like that: folks used to refer to Frank an' me as 'the looker and the other guy', but I'm digressing…Yeah, Frank and I are eyeballing the same job, but I've settled on a photography job that just opened up. I'm better with a camera than a datascriber any day."

"Did you bring your camera?" Frank asked.

By way of reply, Hal reached into his breast pocket and took out a small digital camera. "Brought the Brownie camera: too much trouble to lug around the full rig. Besides, it's just you folks." He snapped a few photos as they gathered around the table, one of Frank and Bernie, and then without warning, a shot of Joe eyeing the Mecha skull with a dubious fold between his wide-spaced brows.

"Are you going to print out those pictures right away?" Bernie asked.

"I might doctor 'em a little first, take care of the glare on our fine friend here, for instance," Hal said, returning the camera to his pocket. "Anyone ever tell you that you photograph bloody well, Joe?"

The Mecha smiled, but he did not look at Hal. "The photographer of the wedding photos said almost the self-same words of me, only more delicately put," Joe said.

"You would say it like that," Hal grumbled. "I took a few snaps myself, meant to bring 'em, but I left 'em in my hotel room."

"Now where are you staying?" Kip asked.

"The Do As You Like Hotel, name's longer than the rooms are wide," Hal said.

Phila and Bernie had taken Frank's warning to heart; there were six Orgas at the table, but Phila had cooked enough for eight: roast beef with oven-roasted potatoes and tarragon-touched asparagus. Cecie caught Hal smiling crookedly to himself. _Was that a good idea, Phila?_

Kip led the blessing; Hal didn't join them, which didn't surprise Cecie somehow. _Ungrateful little bugger_ , she thought.

At least Hal's table manner balanced his appetite. He had also mastered the knack of talking with one corner of his mouth while chewing and not exposing what he was chewing. He and Frank regaled the rest of them with accounts of their college pranks and their exploits in journalism.

"We were covering the palace uprising in Strelsoro, and we were walking through this market square, trying to get back to our hotel," Frank began. "I'm walking ahead of Hal, trying to cut the crowd for him, when he lets out this awful roar. I turn around in time to see this big woman lugging Hal away, flung over her shoulder like a sack of laundry."

"Nobody told me Strelsori women were that tough," Hal said. "And no one told me they were that good for—"

"Maybe I'd better the story," Frank said. Phila wrinkled her face in disapproval. "I had to chase them through the crowd, but I couldn't keep up, there were too many carts and people and stalls and animals in the way. I had to notify the police and the American Embassy to get Hal back."

"That's awful!" Phila cried.

"It wasn't so bad," Hal said, around a mouthful. "She just wanted someone to, er, love. She was the widow of some deceased Strelsori general: she knew what she wanted, so she grabbed it with both hands."

"You could have gotten killed," Bernie said, with a note of concern.

"True: she might have rolled on me," Hal said.

"Is this why Strelsor broke off diplomatic ties with us?" Kip asked.

Frank shook his head. "It's a lot more complicated than that, a LOT more."

In between chatting and mouthfuls, Hal kept eyeing Bernie, who gracefully kept her eyes averted not with the crouch of the old days, but almost with the elegance of a highborn lady. He tried eying Phila, but she kept looking over Hal's head.

He tried eyeing Cecie, but she met Hal's eye squarely. She half-expected to see, from one blink to the next, the pupil of Hal's eyes change from round openings to horizontal slits like a snake's.

Joe, seated on Cecie's left, looked past her head, his eyes utterly devoid of expression.

"What's this, a double stare down?" Hal asked, coolly nerveless.

"It might be if you don't back down," Cecie said.

Hal lowered his gaze from her face to her plate. She'd never been much of a meat eater and the piece she'd gotten was tough and gristly. "You gonna finish that?" he asked. He'd already had second and third helpings.

"It's full of gristle," she said.

"I'll take it for you," Hal offered. He skewered the chunk with his fork and popped it into his mouth. He crunched it contentedly in his cheek teeth and swallowed.

"I hope that doesn't give you indigestion," Bernie said.

Hal grinned, showing a pink filament of gristle caught around his eyetooth. "Don't worry about me, Bern, I've got the insides of hyena: I can digest anything."

"Some folks would argue you have the outsides of a hyena as well," Cecie said with cool humor.

"You got wit under that poker face of yours, Cecie," Hal said.

As Phila and Bernie cleared the table, Hal, leaning forward slightly, started working at his belt buckle under the edge of the table. Phila glanced to see what he was up to, but turned away as if she feared what he was up to. The buckle popped open with a faint jingle. He sighed expansively and refastened his belt a notch or two looser. Cecie wouldn't swear to it, but his left side, below his ribs, seemed a little swollen.

"Pardon my gluttony, but it's what happens when you spent the first ten years of your life in state institutions, half-starved most of the time. I wasn't as lucky as Frank here: he had family to fall back on when his folks croaked off. The syphilitic whore that bore me left me to die in a trashcan, but someone found me and took me in. The state of Minnesota stepped in, took custody of me, and tried to find my parents: they found my mother, but she had no idea who my father was and she couldn't get a license to keep me. When I was ten they put me in stasis, part of the human trials on cryogenics they had; I'm still something of a guinea pig: the experts 're still tracking my medical history to see if it continues to affect me."

"Stands to reason: I think the cryo froze some of your brain neurons," Frank said.

"See what I have to put up with, even from my friends?" Hal said, jabbing his thumb at Frank. "So far I'm told the only after effect worth noting is my stunted growth." He shrugged, then grinned crookedly. "Makes quick ones in tight places easier, and it's handy in trying to get the right shot from the right angle. I've climbed up to places other men couldn't go."

"That's awful," Phila said.

"Some of us ain't lucky enough to grow up in Norman Rockwell-ville," Hal said.

"Uh, that's Stockbridge, not Westhillston," Cecie put in.

"Close enough," Hal shrugged. "Lest you all think I had a purely institutional upbringing, I was lucky enough to get the Daddy Warbucks adoption. Caldwell McGeever of the pharmaceutical company Portnoy-McGeever found me and adopted me. Too late: fixer-upper kids are not always the walking miracles you hear about. I embarrassed Pop so thoroughly that he paid my college tuition to get me to go away."

"At least you had some hope in your life," Bernie pointed out.

"Precious little of it," Hal retorted.

"Need help with the dishes, Phila?" Cecie asked, as Frank, Hal and Kip went to the front room.

"We can use all the help we can get," Phila said. "Funny you're staying back here, I figured you'd be with the others."

"Not with the Hollow Leg present," Cecie said.

"May I offer you the moral support of my presence?" Joe offered.

"Yeah, would you stand guard over the kitchen door so Hal doesn't come looking for dessert?" Bernie asked.

"I would gladly render this service," Joe said, planting himself before the doorway between the front room and the kitchen.

Even over the rush of water, they still could hear the men's voices, talking and guffawing, regaling each other with anecdotes. They heard Hal's rasping little voice most often.

"What an unpleasant little man," Joe remarked.

"Frank wasn't kidding when he said Hal eats a lot," Phila said, scraping a plate into the trash.

"I kept waiting for him to do a Jacob Schmidt," Cecie said.

"Do what?" Bernie asked.

"Eat himself to death," Cecie said. "I'm referring to a character in Kurt Weill's opera _Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny_ who has probably one of the most unique deaths in all of opera, not the usual death by daggers, poison and consumption."

"Or rather, it is a death by another kind of consumption: the consumption of comestibles," Joe remarked.

"He reminds me of Carton Jacobi," Bernie said.

"Might be the eyes," Cecie said.

"They're certainly roving enough," Phila said.

"That wasn't quite what I had in mind, but if the shoe fits…" Cecie shrugged.

When they had finished, they headed into the front room to rejoin the menfolk.

Hal had slipped on his overcoat as if he were on his way out, his left hand thrust deep into his pocket; Cecie guessed he was supporting his bloated stomach.

"Are you going so soon?" Bernie asked.

"I hate to break it to you, but I'm afraid I gotta: Finkelsteen wants Frank and me to report in at eight tomorrow, plus I'd like a little taste of the night life here, if y' know what I mean." Hal grinned suggestively. Relaxing his face, he glanced down at himself. "As soon as I work over this: take it as a compliment, Missis Langier."

"Well, get the rest you need and I'll see you in the morning," Frank said.

"You all take care and I'll see you around the City," then to Joe, Hal added, "Especially you, little fella."

"I beg to differ with this title," Joe said, looking over the top of Hal's head with an odd little smile, "Unless of course you mean it as a term of affection."

Hal grinned back, a low, jerking, grating noise rattled deep in his throat; Cecie realized this was Hal's way of laughing.

"I like your style, silicon boy: you picked the right fella, Cecie."

With that, Hal headed out into the night. They heard his whistle receding up the street.

"How fortunate we are he has gone," Joe said, with something like relief.

"I'd better get back myself: I've got a mountain of copy to write tomorrow and I want to get an early start," Cecie said. "I'm just waiting for the creep to get a goodly distance ahead of me."

"Yeah, he's a little slowed down there with that cropful he's lugging," Frank said.

"I can't help agreeing with Joe: what an unpleasant little man," Phila said, shuddering.

"I guess I was a little short on warning you all about Hal," Frank said. "He's definitely got his rough edges."

"And that man is your friend since college?" Bernie asked, somewhat suspicious.

"Hey, someone had to do it," Frank said.

"Just don't invite him to dinner again," Phila said.

"Don't worry: I won't force you all to endure him like that again."

Hal kicked off his shoes and eased himself onto the bed in his hotel room. He estimated four hours to digest his feed and get it moving, which would mean he'd be heading out after midnight. Oh well, the night would still be young.

He cradled his engorged belly with the insides of his wrists and closed his eyes.

The phone rang. He cursed and heaved himself upright. He thought he'd told the front desk to hold his calls till the morning.

He reached for the phone on the desk and picked it up.

"Hullo?"

"I have what you need, boss. I have what you asked of me."

"Whozis… Jay?"

"Yes, it is I."

"Jack off, will you? I need a snooze and a roll in the hay before I see daylight again in this town. I'll talk to you tomorrow night."

"I only wished to ask you but one thing: do you require another?"

"F- off! No, wait…yeah, yeah, that sounds good. Do one more and then bring me the results. I'll see what I can make of it."

"So it must be one more?"

"One more's good enough for a story."

"As you want it done."

The line cut out. Hal dropped the receiver onto the cradle. On his second thought, he took the receiver off and threw it away, letting it dangle off the edge of the desk. He plopped back on the pillow with a sigh that ended as a belch.

Not a good move: the force jolted a mouthful of bile up into his throat. He gulped it back; at least it beat paying for the same amount of eats. He pulled a newspaper over his face and closed his eyes as the phone started peeping off the hook.

The rain cleared out by morning. Cecie stepped outside for her morning walk to find the sky a clear, scoured blue.

On the way back to the Graceley with her week's shopping, Cecie met up with Raymond Flyte. Since she had met him the year before after her disastrous trip to Westhillston, Flyte had taken an odd interest in her, more than friendly, but utterly free from romantic interest.

"Hiya, Flyte."

"Hello, Ms. Martin."

"Hove you been following the murders?" she asked.

"I have to follow them: the police in Omaha and Nova Francisco have wondered these destructions might not be related to the violence there."

"What, it might be the work of the same malfunctioning Mecha?"

"No, they might be some kind of retaliation. The culprit there was a malfunctioning male lover-Mecha, and so far all the victims have been male lover-Mechas."

"The guards have me under suspicion."

Flyte knit his dark brows together. "They do? They're crazy."

"That's what I thought. The only way they're connecting me is because I discovered both bodies, which the guards found a little odd. I'd expect them to suspect Joe, he was there both times as well."

"They'd hold Joe in less suspicion. They know his nature and I'm known for taking good care of my own."

"Were any of them yours?"

"No, fortunately."

"You have any trouble?"

"Not in that respect. I've just had difficulty in other areas."

"It wouldn't happen to be named Halloran McGeever, would it?"

"Yes, why, you know him?"

"Better than I care to."

"I can't blame you."

"Why, has he busted one of your Mechas already?"

"He came close. Provider-client privilege prevents me from telling you the particulars."

"If I were Phila Langier or Bernie Sweitz, I wouldn't want to know 'em."

"Why do I have the impression that your eyes have gone 'pretty please?' behind your mirror shades?"

"That's privileged information, too."

"All right, you diddled me enough: early this morning, he sent for Calla, one of my lower-budget models. She came back reeling like she was drunk. The bastard had whacked her around so that her conductors had tangled every which way inside her. Natterson's still detangling her insides."

"Oh dear!" Calla was a petite blonde Cecie had spotted several times; she mostly worked the Lower Deck, like most of the older models in the City. "Is there any way you can get payback?"

"There is: jack up his fee the next time he calls for one of mine."

"Good idea: hit 'um in the pocketbook; it's the only spot that hurts as bad, if not worse than the nuts." A thought crossed her mind. "You got any dominatrix types?"

"As a matter of fact, I have one: Xarga, she's six foot three, weighs two-hundred pounds, a brunette built like a lady linebacker. Why?"

"Oh, maybe next time Halloran McGeever asks for a smaller model, send him Xarga instead. Mind you, this is only a suggestion."

"I guessed that from the not-wholly serious lilt in your voice. It's not a bad idea, as an idea."

"My way of venting. I had supper with him and the Langiers and the Sweitzes last night."

"Isn't he a newspaper writer or something like that? Finkelsteen from the _Broadsheet_ came up to my digs last night, said he'd just done an interview with McGeever."

"He's a photographer, or a photojournalist." She glanced over her shoulder. "Speak of the devil, here he comes."

Flyte peered over her shoulder. "The tall one's Frank Sweitz, so I guess the short one must be said devil. Hell, girl, he looks like a devil; fitting choice of word."

"You speak for yourself, Flyte."

"Excuse the curse, must have been process of association. Oy, McGeever's go a face that would stop a clock. At least I know now what to look for if ever I have to slap him with property damage charges."

Flyte went on his way on his rounds through the city; Cecie turned as Frank and Hal approached.

"Here comes the dynamic duo now," she said. "I was just talking to Mr. Flyte about you two."

"Trying to raise prejudice against the media, eh?" Hal grated.

"Too bad Flyte skipped off, we've been interviewing a few locals about the two Mecha murders," Frank said.

"What's the verdict?" Cecie asked.

"Most people are concerned, but things like this have happened before," Frank said. "They're worried it may happen again, but life is still going on."

"They needn't worry too much till it happens a third time," Hal said, adjusting the settings on the digital camera slung from a black webbed strap around his neck.

"What makes you say that?" Cecie asked.

"I covered a serial kill in Des Moines my first year of real work: it ain't serial till three bodies have piled up. Second one may have been copycatting."

"That stands to reason," Cecie said.

"So what about you? What's on your mind?" Frank asked as he pulled his pocket scriber from his breast pocket.

"Oh boy, is this going into the _Broadsheet_?" she asked.

"It might," Frank said.

"Well…I'm concerned; I'm worried about Joe. Is he going to be next? We can only hope these incidents were unrelated happenings and there won't be a sequel. I don't want anything like this to happen to anyone, Orga or Mecha."

"Thanks," Frank said, pocketing the scriber. "I'll get you a free copy."

"I already subscribe, silly," Cecie said.

"So you lookin' for your dark light o' love?" Hal asked, adjusting the camera.

"Watch it, Hal," Frank said, only half serious.

Cecie regarded Hal half over her glasses. "That's privileged information."

Hal peered through the viewfinder of the camera and snapped a photo of her.

"I hope I didn't look too bad,' she said.

Hal shrugged one shoulder. "You're not a bad-looker, but I may not be able to use it anyway. See what happens."

The 'Net connection was still fouled up on Cecie's scriber, and Derek the 'Net wonk still hadn't returned her calls, so she had to head out later that afternoon to Chatters, on the Lower Deck.

As she headed out, she heard footsteps behind her. She turned around, half-hoping to glance up into Joe's green-gold eyes.

Instead, she looked dead on a level into a pair of too-shiny gray-blue eyes peering out from under a straw-like shock of blonde hair.

"Hey, Alex, who's next?" she asked coldly.

"Everyone says it will be me, but not the way I prefer," the young Mecha said in a husky countertenor that yearned to be a baritone.

"What are you talking about?" she said.

He blocked her as she tried to walk away, his hands in the pockets of his tight gray trousers, tucked into calf-high riding boots. "You know what I mean." He slashed his hand from his groin to his throat.

She almost laughed, but she knew from experience that laughing at Alex would cause an undesirable scene, with him following her and taunting her viciously.

"Do you really think I'm the one who killed those two Mechas, or are you just repeating the bats' chatter you heard on the street?"

He took this quietly but smoldering even as he processed it. "I don't know about bats, but I heard some of the Orga hookers over on Concubine Street talking about it. They said you did in both Mechas. Who are you going for next? Me? I specialize in rough stuff for those who like boisterous young boys, but being on the receiving end is another matter."

"I didn't kill either of those Mechas."

"Who can say you did _not_? Have you ever really proved how much we lover Mechas mean to you?" he paced around her, his hips cocked in what looked like a bad imitation of Joe's stance in seduction mode. It was probably meant to look awkward: if Alex were real, he would probably be just at the age of consent: his face had that too-thin look of most teenage boys, stripped of the puppy fat, but not quite matured.

"What do you mean?" she knew, but she was testing him.

He stepped closer to her, putting his knee between her thighs and rubbing it slightly. He looked her in the eye.

"Stop saving yourself and give in to your own cravings," he said in a lusty drawl.

She kneed him in the groin, not hard, just enough to deter him.

He jumped back, letting out the too high-pitched pain yelp common to all male Mechas. Recovering, he glowered at her, then a leering grin crossed his face. "Ahhh, you _do_ want it rough, eh?"

She walked away, her back straight as a board. "Forget it, Alex."

"Go on, go find the softie! Go find your wimp!" Alex taunted, stalking off in the other direction.

Once in the cybercafé, she signed into the guest computer and found herself a terminal. When she got onto the 'Net, the very first page, the city's home page, carried a news item:

Local Copywriter Possible Suspect in Recent Mecha Destructions.

She ignored it and checked her email, sent a few messages, uploaded a few files to her publisher and the businesses she was copywriting for. On her IM, she noticed frank was online but he had his "Away" notice up:

 _AutoResponse from: Heroic Reporter23:_

 _Just got the scoop on a breaking story._

Later, in the early evening, she got herself a sandwich while another file was uploading; as she munched on the sandwich, she watched the brief sunset through the front windows of the café.

Larry passed by her terminal a little while later. "I know you didn't do any of that stuff," he said.

She turned her swivel char around. "How do you know?"

"You're too gentle with Joe. I've seen you with him: you treat him like he was your own flesh and blood. The guards came around here yesterday asking me when you'd logged out the night of the first murder. I showed them the cache on the sign up, showed them your sign in and sign out times. I'm afraid they're going to keep an eye on you the next few days."

She shrugged. "I should be used to it: one of the perks of being a misfit. They did the same to me back home in Westhillston, Mass."

"You? I figured you'd fit in there."

She shook her head. "I was the loner girl who wore black all the time in high school: all the adults figured I was sawing off my own shotguns at home, but all was doing was writing poetry and short stories."

"If you need someone to vouch for your character, I'll stick up for you: I've already got a posting up on the 'Net trying to clear your name."

She reached out and clasped his wrist. "Thanks, Larry."

When he had moved on, she jotted a note on her pocket scriber: _base tech character on Larry: he knows Chanelle isn't the cyber'pire._

She signed out at 19.30 when twilight had long since given way to darkness, and stopped by the Langiers' to say hello.

She showed up as Bernie was starting to wash the dishes. "I figured the Hollow Leg would be back for another handout," Cecie said. Frank and Phila were clearing the table, while Kip was fixing the faucet in the bathroom.

"He knows enough not to show up uninvited: there's a method to his madness," Frank said.

"Have you heard about the rumors flying around about you?" Phila asked.

"Tell me about it!" Cecie groaned. "I got pested by Alex the insufferable on my way out earlier. You know there's trouble ahead when even the Mechas are holding you in suspicion."

"I don't know why people have to be so mean spirited; you wouldn't do that! You wouldn't hurt a fly, let alone…a Mecha, not that it's the same thing," Phila said.

"I've started figuring a few things out about people: they suspect you of stuff just because you're different from them," Bernie said, rummaging in the sink.

"Maybe Westhillston and Rouge City are closer cousins than everyone thinks," Frank said. "I suppose people are people wherever you go."

As he finished saying this, the square pager clipped to his belt let out a high, electronic warble, very like Joe's medallion pager.

"Okay, whoziss?" Frank asked, turning it up. The display read in green script on black: _ShutterCock to HeroicReporter23: Got Mecha at Harlot Square_.

"ShutterCock?" Cecie asked.

"Hal: that's his screen name," Frank said, replacing the pager and going to the other room. "He thinks it's funny."

"I don't," Phila interjected.

"I guess it's supposed to be a gross pun on 'shuttle-cock', the thing they use in badminton," Cecie said. "I don't mind double entendres as long as they're more discreet, like Shakespeare's."

"Do you have to go so soon?" Bernie said as Frank came back, shoving his pocket scriber into the breast pocket of his trench coat.

"I'll be back before midnight, please God," Frank said, hugging her with one arm and kissing her cheek.

"Maybe you'd better stay here, Cecie; they might get suspicious," Phila said.

"If they do, maybe it would be better if they got suspicious up there than down here," Cecie said.

Frank spread his hands. "Okay, I'll do what I can if they give you trouble."

The wind rose when they headed out. Frank flipped up the collar of his trench coat as they quick-walked to the escalator hub.

"Is it always this windy this time of year?" he asked.

"It can get windy in the fall, but this has been exceptional," she said.

"So where were you before you came to call?"

"I was at Chatters; Larry the tech can vouch for me."

"Gathering a cloud of alibis, eh?"

"Mine are for real."

The wind whipped up under their coats as they stepped off the escalator onto Main Plaza. Frank walked slightly ahead of Cecie as they went up Concubine Street to Harlot Square.

The square was more crowded than usual, most of it onlookers trying to figure out what the guards had discovered over near the alleyway between a nightclub and a pawnshop.

In the midst of the milling group of techs and guards, Hal's small black shadow moved, stooped, like some wizard in a dark ritual. Flashes emitted from his camera as he got every shot he could. Frank stepped in to get a few quotes on the situation.

Cecie ducked through the crowd of Orgas and Mechas, trying to get a glimpse of the victim.

The guards had covered the body with a tarp, but at Frank's and Hal's insistence, they lifted it off.

A gasp rose from the rubbernecking Orgas. On the ground lay the body of a red-headed, well-"muscled" male Mecha, clad in what remained of a black leather jacket over a gray muscle shirt and tight-fitting black jeans. It lay with its arms bent back over its head at strange angles, as if it had tried to fight off its attacker. The green license tag on its chest had been half-cut off and it had lost its luminescence, but she could read the serial number and name under the bar code: RP-622 "Ralphie". Something had ripped open the Mecha's abdomen from the base of his "breastbone" to what paralleled the Orga pubic bone. The tubes and pumps inside its groin lay scattered on the ground between its spread thighs. The lubricating and hydraulic fluids from its body had congealed with the dirt, forming gritty clots clinging to its silicon flesh. Other smaller cuts and slashes showed through rents in its clothing. Could these things fight back? Maybe it depended on the Mecha.

Looking at the unfortunate with its electronic viscerae torn out, she was nearly sick.

Stanger, the grizzle-headed guard who had scrutinized her before, looked up at her.

"Ms. Martin, could you come here a minute?" he asked.

She stepped forward. Her father, before his death, had taught her to always comply (within reason) with a cop of any sort: it made things easier in the long run and made them a lot less suspicious.

"Yes?" she asked innocently.

"Where were you about nineteen-thirty?"

"I was downstairs, signing out of Chatters."

"Where'd you go after that?"

"I went to the Langiers' apartment to say hello before I went home."

"I walked up here with her, after McGeever paged me," Frank said.

Stanger looked from Frank to Cecie and back again. "All right, we'll see if this checks out."

Hal snapped photo after photo, finding the right position, the right angle for each with almost Mecha-like precision. He worked quickly, efficiently. Not the slightest wrinkle of disgust or twitch of nerves contorted his thin face, but from Frank's tales of him, the little creep was an old hand at this brand of photojournalism.

"Hal, you wanna come downstairs to develop those?" Frank asked when the guards started dispersing the crowd.

"Thanks, but I got my digital darkroom set up in my tempo digs," Hal said, checking the battery on the camera.

Stanger caught up with Cecie as she started back to her hotel. "You might not want to leave your apartment tonight: we may be up to call."

Cecie walked back to the Graceley on legs numbed by the wind and more than the cold. She almost didn't notice Joe when he stepped up to her as he came out the front door of the Graceley. When she caught sight of him before her, she tried to step around him, but he ran his hand caressingly along her arm. She looked up.

"You seem troubled, Cecie. You seem distraught. What has brought you such unhappiness?" he put his hand to her face, brushing his fingertips across her cheek. He held up his hand. "I've found a tear."

"The guards just found another murdered Mecha," she said, breathless.

He looked into her eyes as if he could heal her throbbing soul just by looking into her eyes. "And they still hold you in scrutiny?"

She could only nod, trying to force back the tears from her eyes.

"Come inside before the cold wind freezes those tears upon your cheeks."

She let him lead her inside, through the hotel lobby to the den just off it, where a gas fire burned on the wide hearth. He helped her onto a low sofa and sat down beside her. He drew close to her, hemming her into the corner where she sat, letting her lean her head on his shoulder. She caught herself wondering how many other women had wept here with their heads nestled into the synthetic flesh at the angle of his neck. Had he just come from the arms of one?

Her chilled body warmed to the heat from the fire and the growing warmth from inside his torso. She sensed movement, and she realized he had drawn her onto his knees, into his lap. She tried to draw back but he had wedged her between himself and the arm of the couch.

She looked him in the eye. "Thus far and no further," she said. He merely smiled with smoldering suggestion.

His skin pulsed with jabs of pain, which made every step along the alleyway painful. The RP-622 had been tougher to take out; its defense chips must have been set high: it took more than a few pokes at him before he could slip his shiv into its belly and even then it had still fought till its synthetic synapses misfired and it crumpled to the ground.

He had what he needed and he could tape himself up once he'd delivered the goods to the boss. Maybe he'd get lucky and get a reward…

To be continued…

Literary Easter Eggs:

(If you've been wondering where they are…)

Derek the 'Net wonk—I borrowed this from the book _ChaseR_ , a young adult "Novel in E-mails": in the first "chapter" the fifteen-year-old hero is describing how he finally got his computer reconnected after a long move out to the country, but only after a looong call to "Isaac the Internet wonk". Art builds from life: my computer is off the 'Net because of a software screw up (which is why my fics always appear like clockwork on Tuesday because that is the day I go to the cybercafé.). Larry the tech is based somewhat on Wally Zabierek, the tech at the cybercafé (If you're reading this, Wally, Hi!).

Hal's broken teeth—Either he got them busted somehow in his wild life, or this might be part of having had a syphilitic mother. I suspect the latter, since kids born under these circumstances often have bad teeth; I learned this from the short-lived, slightly gruesome but fascinating (in a Goth kind of way; they had an excellently chilling main title theme that sounded like something by Enigma) PBS series _Secrets of the Dead_.

"'so what would you say to a little poke?'"—This is based on an urban legend of somewhat dubious origin involving the SF writer Harlan Ellison. It seems Ellison and Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein were in a bar somewhere when this happened: Ellison, who like Hal was a very short guy, went up to this very tall, well-built woman and said (supposedly), "Hey, gorgeous, what would you say to a little f-?" To which the big woman replied "Hi, little f-." Cecie is, if I haven't made it clear elsewhere, about five-eight in her bare feet (almost five ten with her boots on, which puts her almost eye to eye with Joe), so I can imagine she'd blow off a nasty little runt like Hal with this bon mot.

"Do As You Like Hotel"—This is the name of the hotel in Kurt Weill's _Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny_ (the last word is pronounced something like 'ma-ha-GUN-ee' NOT 'muh-HOG-uhn-ee'), which takes place in a semi-mythical pleasure city, something like Rouge City without the sex Mechas, and with just as vague a location.


	4. October 26, 2159

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +J.M.J.+

+J.M.J.+

The Shadows Between the Neon

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

I know, "Where's the rest of _Zenon Eyes: Eyes of Truth_?" That one is being a bear to write, so I'm trying to get this little bit of nastiness out of the way first, so you can get your Halloween treat while it's still that time of year (My Irish druid ancestors celebrated Halloween, then called Samhain, for three days before and three days after the actual date, so if I carry this over into next week, I'm just living up to some ancestral echoes.). WARNING: Contains some very bad French (bad in a grammatical sense, although there is one expletive which I have yet to find a translation for). And now a word from our sponsors: This chapter is brought to you by…candy corn…by mallowcream pumpkins…and by Yankee Candle's "Trick or Treat", "Spiced Pumpkin", "Witch's Brew", and "Pumpkin Pie" (I've been trying to see if they got one that smells like scorched jack-o'-lantern, you know that really neat, nutty smell when the candle singes the inside of the lid of the jack-o'-lantern…); trouble is I don't buy 'em, I just sniff 'em when I'm in the gift shop near my house.

Disclaimer:

See Chapter I

IV October 26, 2159

[Another Note: Me again! Life imitated art: I'm typing this chapter on October 26, 2002. And I suppose life has been imitating my art again in a far darker way, what with the sniper attacks in the Washington D.C. area. Thank the Maker that the sniper got caught yesterday! We now return to our scheduled fanfiction…]

Entry from Cecie Martin's dream journal, October 26, 2159:

A dark, warm place…silk whispers against silk…scents like roses and lilies and musk…

Image: a lily lying on rich, black satin sheets, a lily torn down the side, weeping tears of blood instead of nectar…

Cecie opened her eyes to the plain white ceiling of her room. She sat up and looked around her. Morning. A paper copy of Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ lay on the sheets beside her. The dreams she had after reading…Phila would accuse her of asking for such things, what with THAT kind of reading. She closed the book and threw back the comforter. She arched her back, getting the sleep out of her spine as she cupped the callused soles of her feet in her hands.

An hour and a half later, she stood in the usual morning line to the milk bar on the corner of 12th Avenue and Main Boulevarde, watching the scattering of passersby. Rain had fallen in the night, leaving puddles in the worn patches in the pavement. The daylight dulled the neon to pallid ghosts of its former brilliance, disrobing the dingy gray structures of the buildings beneath. Where it lacked any pretense of moral hygiene, the City maintained a high level of public cleanliness: as in keeping the streets free of trash—the usual papers and bottles and plastic cups, as well as the occasional used needles and condoms—but they couldn't keep the facades of the buildings free of grime. Cecie swore the dinge came from all the raging Orga hormones, which congealed like smoke on the chimney of an old-fashioned oil lamp.

She got her quart of milk—thankfully no knives in it!—and went back home.

She got the _Broadsheet_ from her mailbox and read it over her breakfast. One of Hal's photos had made the front page:

Third Mecha Destroyed; Security Suspect Serialist.

She paged through the paper to the credits box, buried on the same page as the op-ed section:

Francis J.X. Sweitz, junior reporter

Halloran McIver, junior photographer

She paged through the rest. In the business section, she found a prominent announcement:

"Per order Destiny Rohrschact, City Manager and the Rouge City Board of Commerce, Sexual Commerce Division, all male Mecha sex workers are to conduct their business in pairs in a effort to curtail further economic and commercial losses to the city…" she had floaters of Alex getting paired with Joe, perhaps because Alex seemed to get a jag out of annoying Joe, especially by offering himself to her in front of Joe. She couldn't help praying that Joe would get a partner more to his preference.

She spent the day writing late winter travel brochures. She often had a hard time getting into the seasons as they came, since she'd already gotten the spirit several months too soon. This would make choosing her Halloween costume difficult. Here it was Thursday the 26th and she still didn't have a definite idea what to dress as.

She went out again late that afternoon to send off her files and do a little Halloween shopping.

In a gift shop, she found three electric candles and bought them. No one was doing much mourning for the fallen Mechas—except a few sodden businesswomen she'd seen in the bar at the Graceley the night before—but she would do her part. Phila would be livid if she knew, but it had to be done.

She roved the tamer sections of a seasonal costume shop set up in an empty storefront on the Lower Deck. She gravitated to the gothic section of the store: black and maroon simulsilk and simulvelvet gowns with décolletage and built in corseting. She never went for the Victorian drag, preferring a more techno look. And the décolletage wasn't 'her', mostly from principle, but also—even if she didn't have the principles—because she didn't have anything to show for it. Nobody knew, but she sometimes strapped her bosom in place under her blouse with duck tape: finding the right bra size for her scrawniness was nightmarish too often. And she didn't need the corseting either: despite her leanness, she had a good figure with a naturally slender waist and wide hips.

She settled on a maroon-black simulvelvet Empire gown with black and forest green draperies and opera length black half gloves. Add a mask with iridescent black feathers she had and a few black roses, maybe tease up her dark hair and gel it into place and she could be an enchantress.

She bought it and brought it home. She contemplated stopping by the Langiers' apartment, but she decided they needed arrest from her and she didn't want to risk getting into a confrontation with Phila about her costume ("It's immodest!" she could hear Phila cry) and the candles…what kind of argument would they torch off?

 _"Why did you get those?"_

 _"I'm mourning the Mechas that got destroyed."_

 _"You can't do that: they don't have souls."_

"They might have SOMETHING."

She wrapped her scarf more snugly around her head and throat as she ascended to the Upper Deck. The wind had died down during the day, but it had picked up again, not as strong as it had been, but no less frosty.

Rouge City had its own approach to the holidays, including Halloween: she'd seen some of the younger model female lover Mechas walking the streets wearing black witch hats or clad in pink ballerina costumes or schoolgirl outfits in the manner of a teen singer named Brittany Spiers, from early the last century or other cloyingly feminine Halloween costumes. The Vintage Theatre downstairs had run a month-long series of antique 2-D horror flicks including _Vertigo_ and _Dark City_ from way back in 1998; the Cinema Erotique not far from the Graceley had run a month-long series of its own, mostly pornographically artistic and artistically pornographic vampire movies. She'd actually gone to one out of sheer curiosity and found the more symbolic scenes more erotic than the actual sex scenes.

As she approached the Graceley, a familiar slim shadow fell in step beside hers. She looked up.

Joe walked alongside her, giving her a cheeky smile clearly meant to get her attention.

"Hey, Joe, whaddya know—I thought you were supposed to be doubling up?" she asked.

"That protocol has been brought upon us: I was about to rendezvous with my colleague." He glanced past her. "Ah, he comes."

She looked behind her. From the door of the casino emerged a small male figure in a baggy violet blouse open at the neck tucked into black velour pants molded close to his legs. He peered about him with almost birdlike movements, then approached them. She glanced at Joe, whose smile had taken on a roguish twist.

"Is that your friend?" she asked.

"It is he," Joe replied, slyly.

The neon caught on the newcomer's bushy dark brown hair, a little too nicely arranged to make a really credible tousle, and his too-glossy olive-tinted skin.

"Hey, Julien, where've you been?" Joe asked the rhyme did not work, but that had more to do with Joe's accent than anything else.

The small Mecha looked around and quickened his pace, approaching them, his eyes lighting on her.

"Hey, Joe, what do you know?" he responded with a slight French accent.

"Did Miss Ironwood maker her usual demands?" Joe asked.

Julien spread his arms and tilted his head back to one side. "Alas, _mon ami_ , she did. Such is our life. She must have her share of delight. We are only the kneeling ones at the mercy of _les maitresses humane_." Cecie detected a note of delicate angst in his voice; she knew she'd seen him elsewhere in the city.

"Perhaps if you stood up to her a trifle, she would find another, more interesting form of delight," Joe twitted.

Julien rolled his eyes as he looked up at Joe. He was probably the same height as Hal, but he was slightly heavier. He had a stockier build, but he was slim in a soft way. "You perhaps could stand up to her more swiftly than I, _ma cher Anglais_ : you are taller."

"But we are being rude. Cecie, in your perambulations, have you met Julien before?"

"I've seen him from a distance."

"And you, Julien, have often heard me speak of the goddess of the datascriber, Miss Cecie Martin."

Cecie let Julien take her hand. He turned it over and kneeling, covered it with light kisses. He rolled back the cuff of her coat sleeve to start on her wrist, but she gracefully retracted her hand and reached down to lift him to his feet.

"Thanks, but you needn't kneel to me," she said.

"If you are _un diesse de datascriber_ , I must acknowledge your divinity with my being," Julien said, bowing his head and spreading his hands as he arose.

"I meant this as but a term of endearment," Joe said, slightly bantering.

Julien made a harassed noise. "Oh, the crassness of these _homes Anglais_."

"You know as well as I that we were both built in Pennsylvania," Joe twitted, a gleam in his eye.

"Pfui! Hear how he scoffs at his own kind!" Julien cried. Eying her, he added, "Your family name is Martin; are you _une Francaise_?"

"Not really: I'm three quarters Irish, one part French, one part English, one part Native American," Cecie replied, trying not to smile at this exchange.

"Ah, _Mam'zelle s'amuse_. You find the abuse this _Anglais homme-putan_ heaps upon me a well of amusement?"

"I'm afraid I can't help it," Cecie admitted. "It sounds like you're fighting over me."

The two Mechas looked at each other without turning. Then they looked at her, both slightly bemused, but Joe's face betrayed amusement.

"I shouldn't keep you: I've got writing to do tomorrow, so I'd better turn in."

"Must you take your departure so soon?" Joe asked.

"Your abuse of me has annoyed her, M'sieur le Pest," Julien retorted, jabbing one elbow at Joe.

"No, really; besides, you have your business to attend to, your conquests to make."

"But would you not wish to have a pair of arms to shield you from the cold of this night? It could turn you to a maiden of ice."

Joe leaned closer to Julien's ear. "She chooses to sleep alone of nights, no matter how cold." His eyes danced mischievously.

"Perhaps some night you will choose otherwise, ma cherie?" Julien said, a slight Gallic lift to one eyebrow.

"That's hardly likely to happen," Cecie said. But she gave him her hand again, though she tensed it and drew it away before he could start again on her wrist. He thrust out his lightly gathered lips as she did so; she could almost hear his processors forming the words: _you have a block of ice where your heart should be, ma cherie_.

"You take care of Julien," Cecie said to Joe, her hand on his wrist. "Better yet, set your DAS on high, just to be on the safe side."

"So you advise the _Anglais_ and not me?" Julien snipped.

Joe ignored his colleague. "Because you refuse it, I shall heed it." He caressed Cecie's palms with his thumbs.

"You'd say that to any woman who'd think to tell you that," she teased.

"Not many women have had the concern to think of advising me," he replied.

She slid her hands up his arms and drew his face close to hers, her cheek against his, nearly as soft and smooth as her own, but warmer. "You keep yourself out of the shadows tonight and every night until they find out who's doing this." She pulled away, her lips parted, and let him move in on them. Behind them, Julien let out a rude noise. Even that didn't break Joe's concentration on her.

They released each other slowly.

"I shall return to you whole and sound with the morning," Joe promised.

"Don't make promises you may not be able to keep," Cecie warned.

Julien interrupted. "And what of _moi_?"

Cecie made a shooing gesture at him. "Off with you! You're just a gigolo."

Julien recoiled as he'd been struck with an electric bolt. He wrinkled his nose and thrust out his pursed lips, eyes wide. He drew himself up to his full height, which brought the top of his head level with her nose, and turning away, he strutted off in high dudgeon.

"Good riddance," she said.

Joe glanced after the retreating Julien. "Perhaps, on your recommendations, I should request to Mr. Flyte that he should pair me with another?"

"No, you'd probably get Alex then, and I know you don't like Alex."

He winked at her. "And still you show concern for me!"

A dark-skinned girl with her hair bleached platinum blonde passed by them.

"There's gotta be someone who can walk me through the shadows," she said in a come-hither voice loaded with double entendres.

"Duty calls; perhaps I can keep one eye on her and the other on the shadows," Joe said and followed the dark girl into the dusk.

Cecie went up to her room pretending the pain in her chest came from the cold night air she'd been breathing.

The boss had appreciated his work and had rewarded him well—a little too well, perhaps: he still sensed sharp aches at the pain memory of it…

He's gonna get himself caught; he didn't rip out the neural cubes; if you're gonna kill a Mecha and do it cleanly, you gotta rip out the cube, or else some expert's gonna scan the memory banks and they'll see your mug…

Late the next afternoon, Cecie went to the Library on the Lower Deck to check out a few printed copies of the horror novels of a late 20th century writer whose work was just coming back into repute.

She was scanning the list of newly acquired e-books added to the collection (Despite the City's repute as the red light district of the Eastern Seaboard, the library had a respectable collection—if not always respectable in a moral sense) when she heard movement nearby.

"Now what's a nice girl like you doing in a s-hole of a place like this?" asked a grating male voice at her elbow.

She turned to find Hal at her side. "I was about to say the same about you—in much less salty terms," she replied.

He chuckled deep in his throat, a jagged metallic sound with a razor edge of humor. "You got spirit, girl. If I weren't already falling for someone else, I'd take a shine for you, go a little upscale, though we're really in the same profession. Professional liars get more respect than those who tell the truth."

"Only sort of in the same profession: I work chiefly in words."

"And how you do," he mused. "You thinkin' of writin' a perspective on all these Mecha destructions?"

She wagged her head. "I've got other ideas cooking right now, but I might get a minute to toss something off for the _Broadsheet_."

"Eh, we could use some action on the op-ed page. Maybe I could get Fink to let you write a guest column."

"Thanks, but where do you come in calling Finkelsteen 'Fink'?"

"Don't let him know I call 'm that behind his fat a-. He can't seem to get my name right. He's called me McIvers, McGyver, Maguire, you name it. Can't get my name right in the credits either, dammit."

"I noticed."

Hal shrugged one shoulder, an almost imperceptible movement under his coat, which bagged on his frame like a slack teepee around a very short tent pole.

"So what brings you to the Library? I figured you'd be out enjoying the night life."

"Research. Readin' old archives on other serial destructions, like the Chainsaw Massacree here a few years back."

"I was there: Joe and I almost got it that night."

"Thank the fates y' both survived, or we'd have lost a good writer and a good looker at one fell swoop. I see he's had company the past couple days. Who's the frog Frenchman?"

"That's Julien."

"You thinkin' a' jumpin' the Channel in yer tastes? Had enough crumpets, now yer lookin' to try a baguette?"

"He isn't my type, too arrogant and feisty."

"So you like 'em sensitive and lordly, eh? How far you scored with 'm?"

"I don't keep score and I don't try to. Joe and I are just very good friends."

Hall waved one pointer finger in midair. "You're forgetting I've got eyes, Cecie. One picture's worth a thousand words of protesting. Your eyes tell a different story entirely."

"Let's say my heart and my head are at sixes and sevens."

"So you DO get itchy, like the rest of us. I didn't think you were made of marble. Joe ever scratch them itches?"

"It's none of your darn business."

"Information's my business: Who, What, Where, Why, When, How?"

"All right, if you'll stop prying: Who: Joe and I; What: have a platonic relationship; Why: because it isn't in my principles to take it any further."

"How's he take that?"

"He takes it gracefully: he's said his work isn't always about sex, anyway."

"Must be a first for this town. That would make quite a headline: Rouge City Woman Maintains Platonic Relations with Sex Mecha."

"I bet it would, but I'm already notorious."

A metallic twitter peeped from somewhere in Hal's coat. He patted his pockets, then opened his coat and reached for his jacket lapel, where a round pager had been clipped.

"The heroic reporter's calling me upstairs. Breaking news about a knife fight in a casino off Courtesan Plaza. If you see Joe before I do, tell 'm I said hello."

"Drop dead, Hal," Cecie said, taking Frank's tack of half-bantering, half in earnest abuse.

"Don't worry: at the sight of him I just might, though it would take just one lick to revive me."

When Hal had sidled out, she let herself bristle as she hadn't dared in front of Hal: it would gratify him too much. She had an understanding of men of that bent. She could even relate to it while not quite condoning it: she liked guys; she liked guys so much she could see why one guy would have it bad for another guy. But people of Hal's ilk just made her nauseous. He was a consumer, the sort who drains dry whatever he grasps and tosses it aside.

She checked out her selections and headed out, heading home.

In a nook formed by three concrete pilings, a group of homeless men had lit a fire in a barrel to warm themselves. One of them, a ruined accountant she knew only as Vincenzi, glanced her way as she passed them. His companion nearest him nudged him none to gently.

"Hey, Vinz, here's yer gal."

"Shut up, Rufus, she's Joe the Mecha's gal," Vincenzi snapped back. "Hey, Cecie."

"Hiya, Vincenzi. How are you holding up?"

"Same as always: hanging by my thumbs."

"We were gonna get us a handout by sending Vinz over t' Camden come Halloween night: he's so small he'd look like a kid, and with them rags on his back, who'd know?" Rufus said.

"You know it wouldn't work," Vincenzi said. To Cecie, he added, "You following the destructions?"

"Yeah, have you heard anything?"

"Word here on the streets is some Orga man-whore is doing it to thin out the competition."

"I say someone from the Flesh Fair is doin' it," Rufus put in.

"Nah, that was the Chainsaw Massacree a few years back," said the third guy.

"You must know the Mechas are going two and two?" Vincenzi asked.

"Yeah, I met Joe's partner yesterday."

"Ooh, a double delight, eh?" Rufus teased.

"No, the other one isn't my type."

"Besides, she's gone on you, Vinzie," the third guy added.

"Don't be ridiculous," Vincenzi retorted.

"You gonna pay up for the news bite with some spare change?" Rufus asked.

Cecie reached into her satchel. "I don't have any spare change, but I got some spare food," she said. She pulled out some foil packs of freeze-dried cheese and bacon sandwiches.

"Aw, not that freeze-dried s-," the third guy groaned.

"Hey, don't look a gift horse in the mouth," Rufus retorted.

"Besides, she's a good person," Vincenzi said.

"So was my ex-wife," the third guy grumbled, but he took the foil pack anyway.

"You run along before that weird guy comes this way," Vincenzi said.

"Don't worry, I've been keeping an eye out for him," Cecie said. "You guys stay together."

"We will, we're all we got," Rufus said.

Further up the corridor, Cecie heard voices nearby, singing, male voices, one higher and lighter than the other, singing alternating lines, the lighter voice first:

"'Just a gigolo, ev'rywhere I go…"

"People know the part I'm playing," replied the darker voice.

She looked back. Two shadows, a tall graceful one and a shorter, stockier one, approached her out of the darkness between the old-fashioned klieg lights high up on the pilings: the taller shadow danced slow circles around the shorter one.

"Paid for every dance…"

"Selling each romance…"

Then together an octave apart, "Ev'ry night some heart betraying."

As they stepped into the pool of light under the next lamp, the light fell on two familiar sheening faces, one with green-gold eyes, the other with black. Joe and Julien… _Here comes the Jay-team_ , she thought, smiling.

"There will come a day…"

"Youth will pass away…"

"Then what will they say about me?"

"When the end comes I know…"

"They'll say 'Just a gigolo'…"

"As life goes on without me."

She applauded as they reached the spot where she stood. "Bravo! You both got good harmony," she said.

"Would that our working conditions were so harmonious," Joe said.

"Why, is this whippersnapper taking the tricks from you?" Cecie asked.

"If only they would step down from their high horses, they could find that good things often come with small packages," Julien said, standing straighter and taller as if to say, _I count you among these high and mighty ladies_.

Joe smirked at Julien, who retorted with his face crinkled in derision.

"Have you seen anything suspicious?" she asked.

"I have seen nothing you might consider suspicious," Joe said. "Not in a sense of danger."

"Only those who suspect our virtue," Julien added.

"Well, I just want to give you both the heads up on someone else; you take note especially, Joe: Hal McGeever has it bad for you, so if you see him around, just keep walking."

Joe took this with an innocuous smile. "He must be told I am not optimized for his tastes."

"He's struck me as the sort who doesn't care if you are or not, that's why I'm warning you."

"And who is this voracious Meester Mac-GEE-vair?" Julien asked.

"He is a most disagreeable and unpleasant little man with an appetite too large for his small frame," Joe said.

"Perhaps, if you would come down from your high horse, Mam'zelle Martin we could return the favour and guard you on your way back to your hotel?"

"Well, thanks," she said. She let Joe take her arm, but she kept the other close to her side.

"If you will not let me take your arm, will you not let me carry your satchel?" Julien asked, his eyes on her bag.

"O-kay, M'sieur Pesk-ee," she said, mimicking his accent, even as she let him take her bag.

As they stepped out onto the street, a jagged vibration of sound entered their ears, just rippling the quiet of the side street. As they headed along, the sound grew louder, resolving into voices. Two voices yattered and screeched at each other in a ground floor apartment up ahead, an older woman's screech and a young man's holler.

Joe slowed down, then led Cecie across the street as they passed the apartment, keeping himself between her and the street, Julien at their heels.

The apartment door crashed open; a gangly young man stormed out, banging the door shut behind him.

A woman in a faded housecoat pushed open the door.

"Jake, where are you going now?" she quavered.

"Go to f-ing hell, bitch!" the young man roared back. The old hag went back in, banging the door shut

He kicked the front tire of a cruiser parked on the sidewalk. He punched in the window glass, then keyed the door open, shoving it back as it opened. He dropped into the front seat, yanked the door shut and keyed the engine.

The tires screeched, sending a cloud of litter and gravel flying as the cruiser trundled up the street.

"God help them," Cecie murmured.

"We can't go this way," Joe said. His hand on her arm tightened slightly. He led them down an alleyway, along a labyrinth of passageways to the Hub.

"How beautifully the Orgas treat their offspring! They must not wonder that their youngsters seek the consolations we Mecha offer!" Julien cried.

"I know, it's like the young folks can't do anything right for the older generation," Cecie said. "They scream their heads off at us, and then when we take irrational turns, they wonder why."

"Perhaps we Mechas could say the same," Joe mused.

"I wouldn't argue that," Cecie agreed.

They got to the escalator hub and ascended without incident, the cold breeze didn't bite as cruelly as it had on the way down; Joe cut the wind for her by standing on the step above her, facing her. Julien, on the step below her, hedged in close to her, but kept a respectful distance. Still, she caught him eyeing her bosom appraisingly, not lecherously, oddly like a little boy eyeing the jars of sweets in a candy store window.

"May we see you to your door?" Joe asked.

"Thus the voracious Meester Ma-GEE-vair shall not devour you," Julien added.

"Gosh, having both you guys around is like having an entourage," she said. "Thanks, fellas."

To further confuse Hal or anyone else who might be trying to trail them, they took a less direct route, up Broad Way to where it crossed 12th Street at Harlot Square.

A crowd had gathered there, close to the wall of a nightclub, where an all-too-familiar group of guards and techs had gathered. Cecie tried to avoid the crowd; Joe led them away from the press. But the crowd parted, letting Stanger and a couple other guards through.

"Cecie Martin?" he asked. "We got something we want you to take a look at."

Joe tried to draw her away, but she drew her hand free of his arm. She followed Stanger into the midst of the now whispering throng.

A black-clad body lay sprawled on its side on the ground. At first her insides tightened with anticipated horror: had Joe…? But then as she got closer, she realized it was much larger figure. It was—it had been a bondage artist, a massive, blond beast of a Mecha who'd strode the streets clad in form-fitting black simuleathers that always had made her think of an SS trooper in the old World War II movies. She'd heard him called Kurt or Konrad; she couldn't remember which.

"Didn't you once say you wouldn't mind seeing this Mecha destroyed?" Stanger asked.

"I said something like I wouldn't mind seeing him go, but that was after he tried pinning me to a wall," Cecie said. "Besides, that was years ago when I first moved here."

"Oh, it only took you that long to finally get fed up and take care of him yourself," Stanger said.

"I just got here…I didn't kill him."

Whoever had done it had all but hacked Kurt apart: his arm had torn from the sockets of the servos, the wires and connectors snapped. One eye had been gouged out, the shell torn loose, the gray receptor underneath cracked. The mouth hung open, the "flesh" of the cheek cut, exposing the teeth and cut through to the metal understructure behind the mouth cavity.

"That's what they all say," Stanger said, as a female guard took Cecie's wrists and strapped them together behind her back with an orange plastic strap.

"Sirrah, you cannot arrest her," Joe tried to interpose himself.

"We aren't arresting her: we're taking her into custody until further notice," the female guard said.

" _Merde!_ You call yourselves the guardians of justice and order!" Julien cried, with a toss of his head.

Cecie heard the _wing-click_ of a camera shutter; she looked up.

Hal stood over the body, snapping photos of it. He turned suddenly; without removing the camera from his eye and before she could bend her head, Hal's finger twitched on the shutter button.

Across the crowd, Frank was interviewing one of the techs, but at the moment the shutter button clicked, he looked over in Cecie's direction. In the flash of light, his irises seemed to white out for a split second.

"For the love of God, McGeever, let the poor girl have her dignity!" Frank shouted.

As the guards led her away, she saw Julien brandish one hand in an obscene gesture. Joe's face, looking at her from the crowd that moved between them, had gone blank with something like abject horror

His shoulder pulsed where the last one had tried to wrench his arm from the socket. He'd returned the favor in kind, but his pain neurons fired madly, sending needle-stabs of pain up his neural cord. Well, the boss had him take on the bondage artist; he should have known something like this would happen. Let him be the one to patch up the damage…

To be continued…

Literary Easter Eggs:

The lilies in Cecie's dream—My dad discovered an Easter lily in our yard which decided to bloom a second time this season, so he brought it into the house for us to enjoy, so that's kinda where this came from.

Milk with knives in it—a reference to _A Clockwork Orange_ , the setting of which is second cousin to Rouge City—minus the Mechas (They also appear in films by Stanley Kubrick); I've never actually been able to figure out what the "knives" are supposed be: my guess is some kind of kickapoo go-go drug.

"hangin' by my thumbs"—Borrowed from the sign-off of the two classic radio comedians "Bob and Ray" (Bob Elliot and Ray Gould): "This is Ray Gould reminding you to write us if it works"; "Bob Elliot reminding you to hang by your thumbs".

Joe and Julien's little song and dance bit—I modeled the choreography after a song and dance number by Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly in I-don't-remember-which-Hollywood-movie-musical where Sinatra couldn't keep up with Kelly to save his life (Oh well, he could sing better than Kelly).

Julien's pronunciation of Hal's last name—Another bit from another Hollywood musical, _An American in Paris_ , where an irritated Leslie Caron keeps calling the Gene Kelly character "Meester Moo-lee-gahn"

The domestic disturbance—Art draws upon life: the night I drafted this chapter, I went for a walk in the moonlight, up my street and along a side street, when I nearly walked in on a domestic disturbance very like the one I described here. I'd gone out into the dark hoping to find some inspiration to bring a darker quality into this story. I guess I got it.


	5. October 28, 2159

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +J.M.J.+

+J.M.J.+

The Shadows Between the Neon

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

I didn't want to leave you languishing for a week after last chapter's cliffhanger (didn't want Cecie to be languishing in the Rouge City lock-up, either), hence, Chapter V! And now a word from our sponsors: This chapter is brought to you by M&M's Halloween peanuts, by Yankee Candles autumn collection, and especially by Tewksbury, Massachusetts' Livingston Street Terror and its original music by local composer Daniel Hildreth, "Violent Variations on Terror", which I loved so much I bought the CD. Move over, John Williams, Mwahahahahahaha!

Disclaimer:

See chapter I. However, I borrowed the name of the detective from 1998's _Dark City_ and I modeled the character somewhat after William Hurt, who played Burnstead in the same movie (I even borrowed the character's accordion.).

V October 28, 2159

Copywriter Taken into Custody; Local Author Accused of Mecha Murders

ROUGE CITY-Cecilia "Cecie" Martin was taken into protective custody last night, charged with destroying the fourth Mecha found damaged in the city. Miss Martin protested her innocence and seemed in shock as security guards Bob Stanger and Leslie Tiessen led her to the Rouge City lock up. So far the only lead linking Miss Martin to this destruction is a complaint she expressed against the victim, a German import locally known as Kurt. The Mecha, a bondage artist, had once pinned Miss Martin to a wall four years ago.

"Cecie couldn't do this; she'd cut her own arm off before she'd harm a Mecha," commented Karl Vautrin, a friend of Miss Martin's present in the crowd that surrounded the crime scene on Harlot Square. "I've known her since she moved up here [in 2155] and she's always been deferential toward Mechas."

City Manager Destiny Rohrschact has been said to have called in a detective to investigate this rash of damage. Ms. Rohrschact was unavailable for comment.

Cecie couldn't help reading this item as she sat in one of the cells of the Rouge City lock up beneath City Hall. A security Mecha stood opposite the cell door, reading a newspaper as slowly as an ordinary human. She sat hunched on a box close to the bars of the cell, away from the others: two Orga hookers whose red-rimmed eyes and purpled nostrils suggested they were stringer snorters, a guy who kept bragging about all the smart safes he'd broken into, and a teenaged boy in a red halter top and a black leather microskirt, who'd tried feeling her up. It didn't help that her skirt was sliding down since they'd taken away her belt when they booked her.

She had to turn her back to the security Mecha to avoid seeing the photo on the front page: Hal's shot of her arrest. They could call it taking her into custody, but she knew what it was.

 _Don't p- on my leg and tell me it's raining,_ she thought.

She heard footsteps in the corridor and the buzz of the smart lock opening.

"Walter, we'll take care of this," said a voice in the corridor. She turned around. The security Mecha had stood up, blocking the passage of the newcomers, but it stepped aside.

The warden of the lock-up, a bulky man in a military blue suit, approached the cell; behind him were Flyte and Vautrin and a man she didn't recognize: a clam-faced, slightly round-shouldered man moving into late middle-age, his sandy-brown hair hardly grayed, yet receding from his high, intelligent brow; calm, gray eyes and a strong if ordinary face, the kind women call "good-looking in a fatherly way".

"Cecilia Martin? Stand up, please," the warden ordered. He unlocked the door of the cell with a smart key. 'You can come out now; these men are here to help you."

"How'd you get yourself caught?" Vautrin asked.

"A simple case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time," Cecie replied.

"The guards based your arrest on too circumstantial evidence," the warden said.

"They may as well have arrested everyone on that plaza," the third man said.

The third man led her to a small, windowless room with a two way mirror on one wall, a deal table and two chairs stood in the center of the floor under a caged light. He offered her one of the chairs. "Have a seat, Miss Martin; or would you rather I called you Cecie?"

"Miss Martin will do, but I'm afraid I didn't catch your name."

"I'm Isherwood Burnstead, Camden Police Detective. I'm also with the Sex Work Division of the Federal Trade Commission," he said, sitting down opposite from her. "The City Manager sent for me to investigate these Mecha destructions."

"I didn't destroy those Mechas."

"That's what we're trying to find out."

She looked into his face. He seemed sympathetic enough, but that could just be his mask. "I couldn't kill a Mecha. I…I'm in love with one. I couldn't kill any of his kind."

"I don't think you did either. I'm here to clear your name by cracking this case.

"Now, do you know anything about this at all? Have you seen anyone suspicious before or after you found the bodies?"

"I've been keeping an eye open since I stumbled on the first one, for Joe's sake. I'm a writer; I notice things, people's behaviors and mannerisms.

"Now, what I'd like to know is how did you find out I didn't kill Kurt?"

Burnstead smiled calmly. "That was easy: Kurt carried a riding whip; he'd have used it on you: you'd have bruises, welts, maybe cuts about your face and neck, maybe your clothes would be torn. You haven't a mark on you. Whoever did in that Mecha would have their clothes soaked in lubricants and hydraulics: you haven't a spot on you."

"The only eye keener than the eye of a writer is the eye of a detective," she noted. "Do you have any idea what you're looking for?"

"Why would you need to know?"

"I want to help you, for Joe's sake."

"I have two possible profiles: one may be a malfunctioning Mecha, the other may be a disgruntled former client. There are a lot of other possibilities, but it's too soon to start jumping to conclusions. I've taken something of a personal interest in this case."

She smiled thinly. "Oh, saving the damsel in distress?"

"No, Flyte pointed Ms. Rohrschact toward me: he and I go way back, as they say."

"I guess I should thank him for getting me out."

Vautrin and Flyte met her in the warden's office when they let her out. Cecie could have hugged Flyte when she saw him, but she restrained herself.

"How are you doing now, girl?" Flyte asked.

"I've had better nights, but it'll get better," she said as a clerk handed her the box containing her belongings: her belt, her datascriber, her wallet and her satchel, which someone had buggered, probably searching it for the murder weapon. It was a beat to death satchel that would have given way sooner or later, but they'd speeded up the process. "Thanks," she said, putting a hand on Flyte's shoulder.

"I couldn't let you get pinned with the blame," he said.

"As soon as we read the news in the paper, we dropped breakfast and came down here," Vautrin said. "Hope my waffles didn't turn to rubber."

She could only smile as they led her out into the light.

They met Frank and Bernie in the front atrium of City Hall. Bernie hugged Cecie close; Frank put a brotherly arm about Cecie's shoulders.

"What happened? How did you get into this mess?" Bernie demanded, trying to shake Cecie.

"Bern, let off; she's just had the worst night of her life," Frank warned. "Hey, Cecie: I'll treat the both of you to breakfast after Mass. Then you can tell us what happened."

"You already know."

"We need to hear it from you."

They walked out together into the cool, white light of the growing day.

Cecie noticed an unearthly clearness to the light, like the kind of glow that creeps around the edges of the window shade on the morning of the first snow of winter.

When they stepped out onto the front steps, Cecie found the city covered with a quarter inch of wet snow. The neon lights glowed pastel hues off the mist of flakes that still fell.

"Snow?" Cecie asked. "I don't remember the forecast calling for snow."

"It was quite a surprise when we came up here," Frank said.

Later, in Arabica's, Cecie told them her end of the story at length.

"I guess it really was a hot time in the old town last night," Frank said when she'd finished. "After you got tossed into the clinker, there was a car accident downstairs. This kid lost control of his cruiser and smashed into a concrete piling. He survived, but I think he wishes he hadn't: his old lady of a mother shows up and starts hollering at him. The kid almost chocked himself on his neck brace trying to get off the stretcher and strangle her."

"I saw that coming," Cecie said and told them about the domestic disturbance she and Joe and Julien had nearly walked in on.

"I wonder if his mother was all over him because she'd found out he was seeing a Mecha," she concluded.

"Or maybe he was and she started prating about how the rash of destructions has been the hand of God at work purging the world of these machines of iniquity," Frank said.

"Sometimes I wonder if God isn't using Mechas to phase us out or to trim back our numbers," Cecie mused.

Bernie nearly dropped her coffee cup. "Cecie! You mustn't say such things. God promised Noah He would never again destroy mankind."

"No, but He might allow our species to be culled back through a slower, more lingering chastisement," Cecie said. "What I'd like to know is if the person who's doing this might not mistake an Orga for a Mecha. It's happened."

"Yeah, I worked for the paper in Trenton a while back, when I'd first started," Frank began. He looked around, then leaned over the table closer to them and continued in a low voice. "Don't let Joe hear about this, but they had me cover the Flesh Fair when it was playing there. They somehow picked up a guy who just happened to be a Mecha rights activist. He'd been in the woods, counting the derelict Mechas there, trying to collect them and take them to a refuge, but the Hounds got to 'em first. They scooped him up with the Mechas. Poor bloke got chained to a rack; they tore him limb from limb in the ring. The Johnson almost got shut down, wish to God he had. I wrote a few emails to the editor under various names, agitating for it."

"But the Flesh Fair is still up and running," Cecie said.

"Maybe the killer is connected to…that," Bernie hedged.

"That's one of a million theories on the streets," Frank said.

"Can you do me a small favor, Frank?" Cecie asked.

"Sure, as long as it won't offend Bern."

"Can you get Finkelsteen to free up some space on the op-ed section for the next paper?"

"Maybe. What you got in mind?"

"I'm just going to set the record straight. But that's for later: today I have to recuperate from last night's jolt."

"You deserve it, you need it," Bernie said.

Frank stifled a yawn with the back of his hand. "I could use a decent forty winks myself. I didn't get in till after three this morning: Hal held me up, said he wanted to dither with the photos before he brought 'em to Finkelsteen. I told him to bring the dang camera to the news room, but he said he couldn't trust the system: he'd had too many bad experiences with bugs and viruses, he didn't want to risk his camera during the flu season. Last I knew, he'd found some little nook to crash in."

"I'd better get home and crash in a better way," Cecie said.

The Sweitzes parted company with her at the door of Arabica's. She gathered her coat around her, trying to warm her chilled soul.

As she crossed Main Plaza on her way home, the snow still fell softly. The service droids hadn't yet cleared the plaza, which lay white and sheening lightly where passersby had left black footprints.

A shadow fell over her; she turned.

Joe stood beside her, his black satin umbrella in hand, open over them both.

"Have you survived your ordeal in the lock up?" he asked.

"Barely," she said. She slipped her arm through his and rested her cheek on his shoulder.

He folded her close with his free arm. "But who cleared your name?"

"Mr. Flyte showed up: he's helped bring in a detective to investigate the Mecha murders."

"And that explains his absence at this morning's inspections," Joe said. "He had gone forth to help set you free. And what of this detective?"

"He seems like a sympathetic sort: sympathetic to Orgas and Mechas in distress. I offered to help him, to repay him for helping clear my name."

"The more pairs of eyes he has to assist him, the more quickly he cam find the killer; perhaps I can offer my keen vision to help in his efforts."

"I think it would be best for everyone if you stayed put where you'll be safe."

"And leave the ladies of the city to starve on the swaggering of Julien and the crassness of Alex?" Joe said, chin lifted, head up, eyes snapping wickedly.

She was tempted to say, 'we could do without Alex', but if anything happened to him, she didn't want someone to implicate her on hearsay.

"Just be careful. Did you set you DAS on high like I suggested?"

"I heeded your advice. And, I must needs add, Julien took it to heart as well." There was an odd lilt to his voice. He glanced over his shoulder.

"Don't tell me it altered him," she said.

"Alas, it has, and it reveals areas of his programming he would not wish to have disclosed." He held out his hand to her. "Come with me…and you shall see."

She let him lead the way along the street to the small, columned plaza before the Isola da Capri. She spotted Julien posed sensuously against a pillar, but she noticed something odd about his pose. He stepped away from the column with something like a shudder; after a few seconds, he leaned back against the column. The cold of the simulstone must have set off something in his sensors.

"I didn't think the cold got to you guys," she said.

"Not unless our DAS has been set high. Does not the cold burn your flesh?"

"That's true."

Cecie glanced sidewise at Joe, her lips curling in a mischievous smirk. Joe returned the grin. He glanced down at the snow, then looked at her.

"Shall we have a go at it?" he asked in a low voice.

She replied by stopping down and grabbing a handful of wet snow. She stood and tossed the wet wad toward Julien, but not right at him. Julien flinched and looked around.

" _Sacre bleu_! Who threw that snow?"

Joe caught up a handful and tossed it over Julien's head so that it splattered at the smaller Mecha's feet.

" _Mon dieu!_ " Julien turned around. Joe and Cecie quickly turned to each other, Joe leaning seductively close to her.

" _Quelle belle innocence_ ," Julien snarled. "Two black cats have feathers in their mouths."

"How can you say with certainty that Cecie and I threw the snow?" Joe asked, eyes open and innocent as he gestured toward the other passersby on the plaza.

Julien let out a harassed growl and turned away from them, nose lifted slightly as he strode down the street, a bantam with ruffled feathers.

"Now we are alone," Joe said, lowering the umbrella over them. "May I see you safely back to your hotel room before you are mistaken for another criminal?"

"Sure, thanks, but just to my door, okay?"

His sultry face cooled into a pensive look, but he still offered her his arm.

At the hotel door, she let him kiss her, but she broke away almost abruptly and opened the door just wide enough to fit her body through. Joe reached out and caught her hand, but she managed to slip through his grasp, snapping the door shut in his face.

Just my luck, I'll have to fix the evidence myself and they had to bring in an expert, the pantywaisted motherf-ers; no, thanks: not my idea of damage control, but it'll put a whole new angle on the case…

Burnstead moved among the tables in the temporary "morgue" in the subbasement of City Hall, just above the lock-up, a tech at his side. Four tables stood by side, each bearing the sheeted form of a Mecha. To the tech, Burnstead looked like the typical rubber-heeled detective, with no idea what the "death" of a Mecha entailed.

"I trust you checked to see if any parts were missing" Burnstead asked the tech.

"Yes, there were a few parts missing which we couldn't account for," the tech said, a little surprised. "Several conductors were missing, along with a breathing simulator pump, a voice synthesizer frame, a genital control pump—"

"Could be the work of a malfunctioning Mecha or someone with a damaged lover model," Burnstead said, lifting the dustcover from the body of the most recent victim, a KR-636-Z.

Thankfully, Burnstead thought, they had left the unit unwashed. They hadn't tried to patch it up, either. He'd seen too many Mecha corpses when a rookie tech had tried to make it presentable, destroying evidence in the process.

He examined the gaping chest cavity: the right breath simulator pump had been carefully removed, the work of someone who knew what they were doing, not some rage-maddened anti-Mecha activist, or a jealous rival or an angry spouse. An expert had done this: Orga or Mecha.

He plugged a secondary power unit into an access dock at the back of the Mecha's neck. He reached behind its ears and pressed the faceplate release switch.

The plate cracked and opened, uncovering the metal understructures.

The neural cube dock gaped. Empty.

"Did you know about this?" Burnstead asked the tech, pointing to the empty slot.

"We didn't open the unit, but we ran an x-scanner over the face to see if there was any other damage. The cube was there then."

"What time did you run the scan?"

"Just as we got him in, about 20.30 last night."

"What about the others?"

"As far as I know, we scanned them as they came in. If the cubes were missing, they'd have noted that on the report."

Burnstead removed the power supply from the KR unit and turned to the next unit, the RP. He lifted the sheet, plugged in the device and opened the plate.

Nothing in the neural cube dock.

"Mother of God," he murmured. He removed the power supply and went to the next unit, the DR model, and opened that one's face.

No neural cube.

He approached the fourth, the first unit to be destroyed in this serial kill. He practically tore apart the halves of the plate as they parted.

Gone.

He looked up at the tech. "I want to see all the sign in tables from the security computers, the tapes from the security cameras, any security records whatsoever. Someone just stole the most important evidence."

Cecie slept through most of the day, but she woke up late in the afternoon to find the snow had melted. Saturday night: Joe would be booked solid, no chance to get him on his own.

She decided to go for a walk, do some peering about the city, listen in on people's moral gyrations and watch, from a healthy distance, their plunges into ethical dementia.

She followed her nose. If Phila knew what she was doing, she would be livid. Cecie could almost hear the kind of squawking altercation that would ensue.

 _"They'll suspect you again!"_

 _"I offered to help Burnstead; he needs all the pairs of eyes he can get."_

 _"But people will begin to talk."_

 _"Does it matter? Do I care? No!"_

 _"But what if the killer goes after you. I don't want to see you get hurt."_

 _"So far, all the victims have been male lover Mechas. I'm female; I wear glasses: no Mecha does. And I'm hardly likely to be mistaken for a Mecha: I'm too natural looking. Besides, if anything happens to me, maybe it was just my time to go. If I didn't get killed, maybe I'd have had a heart attack. I'm not afraid of death."_

 _"But what about…?"_

Oh, get out of my head, Phila! Cecie thought, shaking her head.

She left the beaten paths lit by the rose and cerulean and gold and amber and violet and emerald neon and headed into the Red Zone, the City's closest equivalent to a red light district (come to think of it, the whole city was the red light district of the Eastern Seaboard). The softer lights and the holographic advertising gave way to peeling posters on the brick walls and sullen red and orange neon. Divey bars and strip joints and cathouses replaced the upscale clubs and bordellos.

She passed by a group of teens gathered around a packing case under a broken streetlight, snorting stringer, that gray green powder that smelled like a mixture of borax and raw sewage. She nearly tripped on an anything but discreet couple on the pavement of the sidewalk: a cheap, older model Mecha hooker grinding herself against some paunch salesman type.

She passed a group of Orga hookers congregating in front of a bar.

"Hey, look who's here! The Lily of Rouge City herself!" shouted one girl with orange and black spiked hair.

"Goin' slumming for a change?" yelled a second, covered in little more than a lot of black body paint with sequins stuck to it.

"Got tired of the Mecha?" taunted a third. Several others shouted various invitations and prices. She looked their way, acknowledging their presence and letting them know she was aware of them, but she said nothing to them. _But for the grace of God, there am I_ , she reminded herself. _But for the sins and crimes of men, they could be me._

A bum tried to feel her up as she passed him by, but she kicked him in the kneecaps. He shambled away, cursing, looking for less aggressive prey.

Cecie drew her coat closer about her; no wind blew, but the air still burned with cold, with a clammy tang to it. A mist had risen from the river, filtering into the streets and alleyways, filling them with a yellow-green vapor which glowed with the neon lighting, flashing red and pulsing orange. Shadows moved through the haze, bums in tattered clothes, half-naked whores of both sexes; a guy with USB jacks in his neck passed her, his eyes unblinking yet red-rimmed, clearly a Mech-Org.

She passed by the "Do as You Like" Hotel, a four story structure tilting over the sidewalk, ready to fall on the hapless passersby.

A short figure in a huge coat loped down the steps to the sidewalk, a bulge under his coat that might be a camera case, his Homburg jammed down on his head

She walked slower to avoid catching up with Hal. As soon as they came to a cross street, she turned down it.

She must have been getting closer to the river. The fog grew denser till it seemed to clot before her eyes and solidify into each passerby.

A low, electric whine rose in the near distance. Two white rods pierced the curtains of vapor. The whine grew louder, the hairs rose up on the back of her neck.

The gray bulk of an electric freight cart heaved past her. She sighed out loud; relief spread through her veins: Nothing to be afraid of.

But she realized she was quickly approaching one of the freight elevator hubs, Rouge City's closest equivalent to a dockyard. She felt for the stunner in her coat pocket and drew it out. She thumbed it on. The contacts crackled, a blue bolt of current leaping between them.

She looked behind her. No one except a drunk retching his guts into the storm drain. She turned to look ahead as she turned down another side street.

She guessed she was approaching a cross-street, a small plaza to guess from the amount of light, like a beacon showing the way back to civilization.

Someone cackled maniacally behind her; she turned to look: only a hag of a bag lady shuffling along, going in the opposite way.

Cecie turned back to the light.

Something moved against the glow. A black cloud condensed in the swirling vapors, coming toward her, seeming to take one step back for every three it took forward.

Her feet froze to the pavement. Her heart thudded against her breastbone and her pulse banged in her temples so hard, she swore everyone could hear it.

The black density elongated, transforming into a tall, dark figure. She heard no footsteps. The figure seemed to hover along the street. She shrank back against the clammy brick wall at her side.

The build, the shape of the head, the mold of the figure, the cut of the garments made her think of Joe. What was he doing there? She almost stepped out to warn him off.

Joe would have had Julien at his side. Something about the gait was not right. The stranger moved stiffly, the strides too long and decisive to be Joe's elegant strut. The stranger walked too mechanically, relentlessly.

Could he see her? If he was Orga, he would have a hard time seeing a girl dressed in black hiding in the shadows against a brick wall. If he was a Mecha, he could see her clearly in the dark. He might even be able to smell her and sense her pheromones.

The figure kept walking toward the spot where she stood, no indication that he had seen her. She smelled an oily reek coming from him, the same odor she had smelled near the bodies of the destroyed Mechas.

She made out a badly healed—or sealed—slash across his right cheek. The eyes above stared straight ahead, glancing unblinkingly neither to the right nor to the left, two pale gray-blue orbs nearly white in the dim light, empty of all emotion, like the eyes of a corpse or of a lemur.

He approached the spot where she stood and kept on walking, not acknowledging her at all.

She watched him continue up the street, his form diminishing into the distance and the fog as he walked. The vapors swirled in behind him and hid him from sight.

She made herself walk normally till she reached the plaza, Hooker Square, the line of demarcation between the Red Zone and the more "respectable" areas.

Once on the sidewalks lit by the softer light, populated with the less seedy revelers, she quickened her pace, not running, but trying to put as much space between her and the Red Zone as she could.

Burnstead sat in his room at the Graceley, poring over the list of employees in the City Security headquarters who had accessed the storage room they were using as a morgue for the destroyed Mechas, trying to see if he'd overlooked anyone. No one knew anything about the missing cubes. He'd searched their apartments. No sign of the cubes, not a trace. There was no way to account for them.

He'd met with the two newspaper guys, Sweitz and McGeever, the good-looking kid with the scriber and the skinny toad-snake with the camera. They'd asked him the usual questions; McGeever somewhat ghoulishly insisted on photographing him near the dead Mechas.

Off the record, Sweitz had asked him if he'd discovered any clues from the Mecha corpses.

"I just discovered someone has removed the neural cubes from the Mechas," Burnstead replied.

Sweitz's eyes got big. "Whoa, someone was pretty thorough."

McGeever shrugged. "Bugger knows his stuff, knows how NOT to get caught, otherwise the techs 'ud see his mug on the cubes when they scan 'em."

"They were stolen from here some time last night."

"Oh boy, the plot is really thickening," Sweitz said.

He was about to get up and take up his accordion, which he always played when he needed to step back from the facts and do a little thinking. Someone banged on his door. He got up, keyed the lock and opened it.

Miss Martin stood there, her face ashen. He let her in.

"What's wrong, Miss Martin? You look as if you've seen a ghost."

"I only wish it were that simple," she said, sinking onto the chair he offered to her. "I just saw a Mecha that looked very much like the one the police in Nova Francisco and Omaha are looking for."

"Are you sure?"

"My knees were knocking together, but my head was clear."

A time to be constructed, a time to be destroyed.

A time to destroy.

As she finished talking, the phone rang. Burnstead reached for it and picked it up.

"Hello? Burnstead speaking."

"This is Stanger; we just found another Mecha over near 7th Street, not far from the Red Zone."

"I'm coming right over."

He hung up and went for his coat.

"I guess I'd better stay put," she said.

"I'm afraid so."

"Another one?"

"Yeah, I don't want to have to rescue you again."

To be continued…

Literary Easter Eggs:

The snowfall—We had a brief, freak snowstorm the day I drafted this chapter, dumping about a half an inch of wet snow in our area, but it melted within a few hours, once the sun came out again. Snow on colored leaves, only in New England…


	6. October 29, 2159

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +J.M.J.+

+J.M.J.+

The Shadows Between the Neon

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

I finally got into the spirit, thanks largely to the soundtrack for the Livingston Street Terror Haunted House, which I have been listening to non-stop as I write the horror sections of the chapters. You might be able to get it through their website at .com. Things finally start to get spookier here. Enjoy your Halloween treat! (Hopefully my computer will let me finish typing the last three chapters later this week, so I won't keep you all in the dark for long and so I can FINALLY get back to ZE: EOT; [Are you listening you bucket of conductors?]).

Disclaimer:

See Chapter I.

VI October 29, 2159

Bulletin, Our Lady of the Immaculate Heart Chapel, October 29, 2159

From the Pastor's Desk:

…At the risk of sounding heretical, I ask you to please keep our silicon and titanium brethren in your prayers, that God may protect these defenseless creatures from the assassin lurking in the shadows between the neon. Already five of these defenseless creatures have been destroyed. To those who object to this intention, I remind you that these lover Mechas are of themselves blameless, it is what we use them for that is sinful…

"So are you going to the Danse Macabre tomorrow night?" Cecie asked Kip and Phila as they headed out of the chapel after Mass Sunday morning.

"I don't know: after seeing some of the awful costumes in the stores, I don't know if we should," Phila said. "Besides, isn't there something a little satanic about Halloween?"

"Not satanic, just dark," Cecie said. "It's the old Celtic new year's day, when the druids offered sacrifices to propitiate and drive back the dark gods who threatened to blot out the sun and plunge the world into eternal night, with the shortened days as a harbinger of things to come, and to ensure the safety of the souls of the departed of the year before."

"Sort of like a pre-Christian All Souls' Day. They were just trying to put in a good word with the big kahuna, as they knew him, for the souls of the deceased: 'Hey, Celtic big kahuna, I'm offering this, my best cow, on behalf of my brother Seamus who died during the year. Use my merit, miserable as it is, to go back and help him die a good death—and find out Who really is the big kahuna'."

"That's one way of looking at it. The Church built off it, just as grace builds off nature, and the way the whole liturgical calendar echoes the cycle of the natural year," Cecie said.

"It's really supposed to mirror the life of the Church and the life of Christ," Phila insisted.

"I think Father Crawford would say you're both right in different ways," Kip said.

"You speak that in true diplomacy," Joe said, falling in step with them.

"Hiya, Joe, you holding up these days?" Kip said.

"I am, as well as I can in these times which try the very fibers of ones being," Joe said. "Have you heard that yet another Mecha murder has occurred?"

"Yeah, Frank told us about it right before Mass," Cecie said. "He and Bernie left right after Mass so Frank could go home and rest for awhile."

"It's weird that Hal keeps insisting on working on the photos on his own computer instead of the ones at the newspaper office," Phila noted.

"Frank says Hal's just trying to protect his investment in his computer and that camera," Kip said. "You can't blame him, really, but he almost makes it awkward for the paper."

The four of them headed down to the Langiers' apartment.

"Shouldn't Julien be with you?" Cecie asked Joe. Phila glared at Cecie, totally misunderstanding the question.

"He has a standing order with an old dowager who reigns from one of the towers," Joe said. "He shall not be freed of her for most of the morning: but he will page me as soon as she gives him leave to roam free once more. She has said she might buy Julien from Mr. Flyte for the little rascal's weight in platinum. She can well afford it."

"I hope she does," Cecie said.

Joe studied her face for a second, clearly trying to guess her intention. "You dislike him indeed!"

"Of course," she wound her arm through his. "He kept trying to get in between you and I."

The three of them had a sedate brunch, but the conversation was anything but sedate.

"So where were all of you when the latest victim was found?" Cecie asked.

"We were both across the river in Haddonfield, buying pumpkins," Kip said. "Frank and Bernie were home having a quiet evening."

"We were _trying_ to have a quiet evening," Bernie corrected.

"I went for a walk, but I had to turn back, because I spotted something and I had to pass on the information to Burnstead," Cecie said.

"Why, what happened? What did you see?" Kip asked.

"I was down near the Red Zone, when I spotted this really weird guy," Cecie started.

"You're bound to see a lot of weird guys down that way," Phila said, rolling her eyes.

"Let Cecie tell her story," Kip said.

"He was weirder looking than that: he looked a lot like Joe; he could have been Joe's twin brother. I almost thought it was him."

"Fortunately for us all, it was not I," Joe said coldly. "The Orgas of the Red Zone have no use for Mechas of my capability; they do not deserve me any way." Then with a proud little smile, he added, "I had the good fortune to be engaged with a young lady just learning the ways of tenderness."

"Lucky you were: if you stumbled onto the scene of the latest crime and someone who had spotted the weird guy saw you, they'd think you were him," Cecie said. "I figured it out he wasn't you: he didn't carry himself the same way and he had a gash across his right cheek, not sealed over well."

"Like someone had done a patch job and didn't know quite what they were doing?" Kip asked.

"Yeah. Oh, and he smelled of hydraulic fluid, like it had got on his clothes. And I got this real bad feeling near him."

"I'd have a bad feeling just being in the Red Zone," Phila put in.

"We know you would: let Cecie finish her story," Bernie said.

"Yeah, there was one last bit that sealed it: he didn't dance when he walked, you know the way Joe dances when he walks," Cecie said. "This guy just strode down the street, all on autopilot, like he had some place to be and he couldn't waste time on things like looking good."

"Wait, wasn't the Mecha that beat up those people in Omaha and Nova Francisco a JO-4679 like our boy?" Kip asked.

"Yeah, I told Inspector Burnstead about it. He wasn't quite convinced, but he wouldn't rule out the possibility, either. The thing had been spotted in Kentucky a week after the Omaha incident."

"I suppose you're doing the right thing by helping the investigation and you owe it to the inspector for clearing you," Phila said. "But aren't you putting yourself at risk?"

"We all have to take risks in order to do the right thing," Cecie said. She put her hand on Joe's hand. "I don't want him to be next."

A few minutes later, Frank came out of the back bedroom arms in front of him zombie-like, an empty coffee cup balanced on his head.

"Need coffee," he murmured tonelessly. He took the coffee cup down and put it on the sink. "I snoozed for about forty-five minutes, but then I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep for anything."

Bernie got another pot of coffee ready.

"So did you know the Mecha who got his brains ripped out last night?" Frank asked Joe.

"I did not know him well: he belonged to a procurer on the north side of the city," Joe replied. He eyed the datascriber stylus sticking out of Frank's shirt pocket. "Will this go into your written account for the _Broadsheet_?"

"Nah, probably not. I got that written, plus I gotta run that and Hal's photos over this afternoon."

"Mind of we look at 'em," Cecie asked.

Frank shrugged and got up to fill his coffee cup. "Sure, though mind you, they're rather graphic. Someone really hacked at this poor guy."

He took a sip of coffee, set down the cup and went into the bedroom. He came back with a plastic folder, which he opened and laid out on the table. Disks, a printout of the draft of the text, and three 8X10 glossy photos with a label on the back written out in Hal's spidery handwriting.

Cecie studied the photos. The first showed Burnstead and a tech kneeling beside the draped body of the victim; the second two showed just the victim, a Mecha with dark blond hair. His faceplate had been smashed in and the middle of his forehead cut into. The jaws had been torn open so that the lower jaw lay on the neck, showing the skull beneath the silicon skin. One arm lay at an odd angle as if it had been torn from the socket. The chest lay split open as if the attacker had torn the ribs from the breastbone, or whatever a Mecha had there. Bits of metal viscerae and fiber optic cabling and lucite chip boards lay scattered on the ground.

The third photo resembled the second, except that the victim lay alone; someone's well-shod foot could be seen near the victim's head.

Cecie studied the last two photos closely. "Frank, you notice something different about these two photos of the body?"

He looked. "Yeah, there's and unidentified foot that's not in the third photo."

"No, the angle of view is different. The third one is at a sharper angle."

Frank peered at the photos; Joe looked at the over Frank's shoulder.

"By golly, you're right," Frank said.

"It is as if Mr. McGeever was standing upon a wooden box when he took this picture," Joe said.

"Hal wouldn't do that. If he was gonna get on something, it would be something bigger 'n a box: a trash can or a tree branch or a windowsill…or my shoulders."

"D' you know if Hal has an assistant? A camera carrier?" Cecie asked.

"No, he's always been a lone wolf, except for me. No one else can stand him."

"I certainly can't," Phila said.

"Maybe we should do a little investigation ourselves," Cecie said

"What did you have in mind?" Frank asked, stifling a yawn.

"Maybe we should follow Hal and see where he goes, who or what he meets."

"Sounds good: just let me get some more winks before," Frank said.

Joe's pager trilled. He took it in hand like a nineteenth century gentleman looking at his pocket watch. "Julien has escaped from his gilded cage," he said.

"Let's meet up here about, say, 17.30?" Cecie said. "Wear black, Frank, you'll blend in with the shadows better."

"Will do," he said, "I jus' might put a black cover over my face to keep the light out." To Joe he added, "You be on time y' hear?"

"The question is will you Orgas be on time what with the time change? My internal clock has already been reset," Joe replied.

"It's been reset, eh?" Frank asked. "That I'd like to see."

The cockiness vanished from Joe's face. "You would find it as painful as I do."

The sun set at the same time as before: he worked only by the sun as far as he could see it. He had huddled long enough in the dank little hole below the level of the river where he had been hiding himself. Rats and other vermin had crept out of their nooks in the walls of his chamber; he had caught them with his hands and crushed the life from them. They had been easy to catch: he smelled like nothing to them. But the time to move had come; time to get his orders for the night. Perhaps a time to receive payment for his labors, or time to give back to the boss. Or time to kill. Or, better yet, all three.

Pain. He kept his pain keened to knife-edge, which counterbalanced with the heightened pleasure he sensed. The two together made a strange cocktail. Perhaps he would drink deeply of it tonight.

Time to see how the apple cart would get upset tonight, time to see what would roll off tonight. Jay would be looking for his cut and he needed it himself…

Cecie arrived at the Langiers' at 17.30 on the button. She didn't see Joe, hadn't seen him anywhere. The streets had been weirdly empty all day and even that evening, especially empty of male lover Mechas. Concerned owners had doubtlessly kept them off the streets. Perhaps Mr. Flyte had likewise kept Joe indoors and out of harm's way. She couldn't fault him for that. But she'd made and appointment with Joe and that had to be respected.

She hoped he wouldn't bring Julien along, but Flyte probably required it. No, not that pest! She ground her teeth at the thought as she knocked on the Langiers' door.

A jack o' lantern glowed in the window, probably Kip's work: at brunch he'd talked about carving jack o' lanterns with a drill press at his garage and soaking the finished work in a pumpkin preservative he'd bought in Camden.

Something banged the inside of the door. It flew open and a dark figure strode out onto the doorstep, clad in a black trenchcoat over a heavy black jersey, black cargo pants and combat shoes. Black rimless sunglasses hid his eyes.

"Do I look inconspicuous enough?" he asked.

"Kinda, your get up reminds me of when I was in high school and the kids used to annoy me at Halloween by trying to dress like me."

"So where's the third guy?"

"Correction: where is the third guy and the fourth guy," said a familiar charming voice behind them.

"The more eyes you have, the more eyes there will be to see the _maleficent_ ," Julien added as he and Joe stepped out of the shadows to join Frank and Cecie.

"The fourth wheel on a cruiser," Cecie said. She took Frank aside for a moment. "I've got an idea," she, putting her head close to his and sharing the plan.

"All right, let's go find us that Mecha-killer," Frank said, rubbing his palms.

"Do you mean a killer of Mechas or a Mecha who kills?" Joe asked as they headed along the street.

"Hopefully just the former. I don't want to think about the latter," Frank said, shivering inside his coat.

"Should you really be tagging along, Julien?" Cecie asked. "Wouldn't you rather be safe back at the Perfumed Alcove?", referring to Flyte's headquarters.

"And so neglect to guard you from the killer? Pah! You must take me for a coward," Julien said, ruffled like a bantam rooster.

They came at length to a narrow alleyway that opened off a small square. "Okay, Sir Julien, if you're so brave, _you_ go see if there's anything suspicious lurking in that square," Frank ordered.

"Oui, meesieu'," Julien sneered.

Julien found no one more suspicious than a few older model female lover Mechas, who mistook him for an Orga. He refused them delicately; they could not enjoy fully what he could give them and with his DAS as high as it was, he could not savor their presence either. He had his orders.

He returned to the spot where he had left Mademoiselle Martin, Monsieur Sweitz and his own _beau comrade_ Joe. They had vanished.

"Joe?" he asked. "Have you spirited away our Man'zelle Martin?"

A low groan rose from the alleyway. He stiffened, ready to flee. He started to approach the alley mouth, a square portal opening onto blackness, not a gleam of light to relieve it. Even his night vision could not penetrate the gloom. Had the killer-?

Another deep wail rose, echoing off the walls and the ceiling. The lubricating fluid in his joints and the hydraulics in his torso ran cold.

He stepped valiantly toward the alleyway; if he was destroyed, let it be in defense of Cecie and Joe.

"AaaaaaOOoowwwwweeeeehhhh!" a wolf howl resounded.

A mask of a face lunged out of the void, hollow-cheeked, mouth gaping, lit by an eerie blue-white light. The tongue, purplish and flabby, lay loose over the lower fangs.

Another scream split the stillness, Julien's own cry, escaping his voice synthesizer. Overriding his valiant intentions, he fled, running as fast as his short legs could carry him, his servos whirring madly. The soles of his shoes barely touched the steps of the escalator as he ran up it; he didn't stop until he safely reached the tower where Flyte lived and had his business.

"Bye-bye, Julien; I hope you don't meet any real horrors," Frank said, as the three of them stepped out of the alleyway. "Amazing what you Mechas do when your DAS is too high."

"Julien has his idiosyncrasies, which worked wondrously to our advantage," Joe said.

"I wish I could have seen my face," Cecie said. "Nice touch with your hand light."

"One does what one can," Joe said. "It helped achieve your goal—and, in a manner of speaking, mine."

"Why, you as sick of him as we are?" Frank said.

Joe processed this. "You might call it that: finding business is not so easy in twos as it is alone."

"So what's the game plan, Frank?" asked Cecie.

"I talked with Burnstead on the phone today: he seems to think the killer is hiding inn the Lower Deck by day and coming out at night to do his dirty work. There's a method to his madness, whoever he is."

"Whatever he is," Cecie added.

"True."

"Might it possibly be a she? I have suffered at the hands of disgruntled and disturbed women," Joe suggested.

"That's very possible, too," Frank said. "But most of the time, women hire someone to do the work for them, and a hired blade would have ripped the neural cubes out to begin with, not sneak down to the morgue to swipe them and then remember to take the cubes. Oh year, and the killer wised up: last night's victim had it's neural cube ripped out."

"Did Burnstead ever figure that out, where the cubes went?"

"He ruled out everyone who could have done it who had easy access to the morgue. The techs knew absolutely nothing about it and the few others who went in and out didn't know how to unlock a dead Mecha's faceplate."

"Which leads him—and us, really, back to square one," Cecie said. She looked at Joe, "You have anything thoughts on this?"

"Alas, I do not; would that I could help enlighten your minds," Joe said.

They ascended to the Upper Deck in thoughtful silence, bracing themselves for the chill wind which blew down the shaft to them, echoing off the sides in low moans. Cecie gripped Joe's arm, feeling foolishly like a kid at a horror flick. Joe caressed her hand with his warm fingers.

Main Plaza lay all but deserted, except for a few lonely souls flitting along, heads bent, glancing up over turned up collars, looking for something likely, or the Mechas passing by offering them the shelter of a warm pair of arms. Few needed further coaxing out of the reach of the cold.

The jazz and the grinding rock music from the clubs had died down to a low roar almost low enough for the wind to drown out and distort. The hawkers' cries echoed dim and distant, mere tonal jetsam on the wash of the wind.

Frank took Cecie's free arm as they crossed the plaza, but he held it loosely, respectfully.

"Don't want anyone, including me, to get any wrong ideas," he said.

"So where are we going precisely?" Joe asked.

"First stop is the Do as You Like Hotel, see where and if Hal McGeever goes out. If so, we're following him wherever he goes," Frank said.

They walked in the light for as long as they could along the main streets and by ways. Joe knew a shortcut to the Hotel, so he led the way for several dozen yards.

"Should we really be down this way?" Frank said, beginning to hesitate.

"Aw, don't get chicken now, HeroicReporter," Cecie teased.

"There are three of us: few lone assailants would wish to deal with this many of us at once," Joe said.

They reached the hotel a few moments later and hid themselves in the doorway of an adult bookstore.

"Come on, Hal, don't you have an appointment with someone or something?" Frank murmured. "What about the source that's giving you the alternate takes?"

As if in answer, the door of the hotel opened and Hal emerged onto the stoop. He paused and patted his pockets, then stepped down to the street, heading deeper into the Zone.

"Not there, if Phila knew where we were, she'd skin me alive," Frank murmured.

"Don't tell me you actually care what she thinks of where this mission takes us," Cecie said.

"No," Frank admitted, resetting his mind.

Keeping to the shadows, they walked as quietly and quickly as they could, keeping Hal in sight. Their path turned down and alleyway, plunging into the very depths of the Red Zone, the same neighborhood where Cecie had spotted the stranger the night before. The memory still hovered at the surface of her recall; Cecie's hand clung to Joe's hand for comfort, for strength.

They walked single file, keeping Hal in sight, but not so close that he would hear them, Joe, walking before Cecie, her hand in his, walked the most silently of all: she couldn't hear his footsteps; aside from an occasional rustle of his coat, he hardly let out a sound to give his presence away. The night and the wind drowned out every other sound from his person.

They flitted down the streets, heading deep into the Red Zone, close to the freight elevators.

Hal stopped near an alley between a convenience store and an empty building. He paced slowly back and forth, whistling "In the Hall of the Mountain King". He turned the collar of his coat up, then flipped it down.

They watched where they could see and not be seen from the recessed doorway of an empty storefront. They looked toward the freight elevator hub, watching for movement.

A shadow detached itself from the gloom. A klieg light sputtered on, back-lighting the figure as it strode toward them.

Hal's whistling got louder, as if he were giving a signal, or trying to reassure himself.

Cecie felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise in alertness. She tightened her hand on Joe's arm.

"Don't move," Frank warned, just above the level of audibility. Joe held her close to him.

A long shadow fell along the sickly-lit pavement, down the middle of the street, a shadow that sifted and moved slowly toward them, unfolding itself.

A pair of black-shod feet trailed the shadow; Cecie's eye swung up the newcomer: the black pants of coarse material over legs as shapely as Joe's; the black frock coat, likewise of the same coarse cloth, of a familiar cut, the white shirt, strangely spotless.

The face lifted and turned toward them, so like Joe's face, and yet so alien: the same finely molded features like the face of a Greek statue, and yet so animal—no, lower than an animal; the face of a beautiful creature moved by an unhinged mind. The eyes all but lacked any color except the palest shade of gray-blue.

Someone had torn a hank of hair from his scalp, leaving a bald patch at the hairline. His last victim? A woman he had assaulted?

He flared his nostrils and sucked in the air. They were so close, they could hear the indraft.

"Hey, Jay, whaddya say?" Hal asked.

The figure lifted on his toes and turned toward Ha. For the first time, Cecie noticed a real similarity between Joe and this other.

"What do you want of me tonight?" Jay replied. The voice was Joe's husky tenor, but devoid of accent, even a flat American accent. "What do you have for me tonight?"

"I've got a heartbeat simulator with your name on it, but it's still beating right now," Hal said. He reached inside his coat and took out a photo. "It's name is Florent, another European job, Swiss-made, I think. Might give you some trouble, but not like the last one."

Jay studied the photo in silence, scanning the image up and down. He opened the neck of his shirt and put the picture inside.

Cecie could see no trace of the license tag that should have been implanted on Jay's chest, unless he had it elsewhere. But she realized there was a deep, wide gash in his dermis, baring the fibers and metallic viscerae, as if the tag had been removed.

"And so, where do I find this Florent?" Jay asked.

"You'll find him up by the Milk-White Arms, just off Courtesan Square."

"Alas, those milk-white arms will soon be stained dun and scarlet."

"Go to it, Jay and don't forget: the cube, boy, the cube." He kneaded Jay's shoulder with one hand; the Mecha started to lean down to him, but Hal pushed him back. "Nope, nope, not time for that yet. Not till you've done your night's work, boy."

"Then do not lead me into temptation."

"I'm the one who can get tempted, remember?"

"You are not the only one, Halloran."

"Oh, get going before I decide who can get tempted and who can't. I'm the boss Orga, remember? I'm the one on top."

"You remind me often enough," Jay said.

"Meet you at the Do as You Like in, say, an hour and a half?"

"I shall be there."

Jay turned and walked away, up the street, his shadow preceding him as he vanished into the gloom.

Hal reached into his breast pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes, took one out, then fumbled in his pocket again. he reached into another, coming up empty-handed.

"Damn, I thought I had a light." he stuffed the cigarette back into the pack and headed off in the same direction Jay had gone.

"Guess we found our Mecha-killer, or is he a Mecha killer?" Frank said.

"Now what do we do?" Cecie asked.

"I'll call Inspector Burnstead," Frank said. "Then I'll try to catch up with Hal and call him off."

"He's rigging the news," Cecie said.

"That's not half as bad as destroying those Mechas in the first place, or getting a Mecha to help you with the destructions. The whole cocktail shaken together is downright criminal," Frank said. "You got your cellphone, Cecie?"

"Check," Cecie replied, feeling it in her coat pocket.

"Okay, you keep an eye on Cecie, Joe. Get her out of her if anyone or anything shows up," Frank said. "Make sure she gets back home in one piece."

"I shall protect her with every fiber of my being," Joe promised.

"I'll meet you back at the Langiers," Frank said. "If you have any trouble, page me.'

"We will. We'll be there," Cecie said.

They parted company, walking quickly, but not in a hurry, walking as if a brisk pace were their normal speed.

Joe led her out onto a street half-tamed by fizzling klieg lights. A few vagrants and pushers tried to approach them, but Joe sent them away with a snappy reply and led Cecie on toward the safety of the zone around Main Plaza.

"Funny I should meet the likes of _you_ two around here," said a grating voice alongside them.

They both turned: Hal had fallen in step with them, grinning and showing his splintered teeth.

"You out going slumming?"

"I was merely leading Cecie home to her apartment," Joe replied icily.

"I was out here looking for a little atmosphere for one of my latest works in progress," Cecie said. "I just got a little more than I wanted."

"But of course, Little Miss St. Mary's of the Lace Curtain Ladies' Finishing School," Hal sneered. He followed them, trailing their very steps. "He helping you with your…research?"

"I am merely acting as her guard," Joe said.

"Oh, I see," Hal drawled. "You two ever do a little more intimate research?"

"We have not," Joe replied.

"That bad, eh? She the only woman you couldn't get to hear screaming in yer arms, Joe?"

"Do not speak of her so, it is not your place."

"Oh, really bad. Hey, Cecie, is it true? You that frigid, even in this thing's arms?"

"It's none of your business, McGeever," Cecie replied, as icy-toned as Joe.

Hal stepped in front of them blocking their path.

"Maybe it means yer tired of imitation flesh," Hal said, his head tilted back at an angle to minimize the fact that he had to look up at her. "How about you get yerself a nice bit o' man flesh for a change, eh?" He reached up to her shoulder. "Nice and well-seasoned, a little tough, but you'll get used to it." He dragged his hand down her front, down to her breast.

"Take your hand from her person, Mr. McGeever," Joe said.

Cecie slid out from under Hal's hand. "Sorry, Hal, I don't do Orgas," she said. "Especially ugly ones."

"So you're gone on this thing, eh?" Hal snarled, trying to reach down past her waist.

She knocked his hand aside and kneed him in the groin. This hardly deterred him; he went at her again. She stomped on his foot, which made him lose his grip.

"I asked you to take your hands from her," Joe insisted, his voice rising. He pulled Cecie away from Hal. She grabbed Joe around the neck and crushed her face against his, kissing him so hard their teeth clacked against each other. Joe leaned his shoulder against the wall beside them.

Ignoring Hal's obscene insults, Cecie hung onto Joe, pulling herself up on tiptoe. She twined one leg around his hip, trying to pull herself up. Joe's hands slid down the small of her back to her buttocks and, supporting her this way, hoisted her up, helping her get the other leg around him, which was awkward to say the least, on account of her long skirt. Cecie leaned her weight back, pulling Joe away from the wall; Joe countered the gravity by kneeling as they dropped to the ground, breaking the fall slightly. He landed on top of her, covering her completely, pinning her to the pavement.

"Oh well, maybe I can join in," Hal said, leaning over them. "AAaauuGGHhh!"

In an almost knee-jerk reaction, Joe's foot horse-kicked up and back; Cecie heard the unmistakable _plock_ of Joe's heel hitting Hall in the groin.

"Oh god, oh god, oh god," Hal groaned, clutching at his crotch and staggering away. "It's on you if I'm damaged." He hobbled away into the shadows.

Joe had slipped his hand down toward the hem of her skirt, trying to finger it. Cecie pushed his hand away and tried to push him off.

He got up, lifting her to her feet.

"You were toying with me," he said.

"I was only trying to blow Hal off."

"You could not have chosen a more frank or explicit way to tell him so…unless you had let me take you here and now."

"That's not going to happen," she said.

"Then it was as you intended when you kept me away from Bernadette in Westhillston," he said. "I have been used for pleasure, but this for which you have used me…this has no name. It is not even abuse. It is nothing! Do I mean nothing to you? I can show you the stars and I have seen you reach for them, but you have yet to do so for your own needs."

"At least you can't say I'm selfish," she said.

"There is no name for what you are doing," he said. He gave her his arm, but when she took it, the flesh had gone cold.

They took Broad Way to Main Plaza, walking in silence, none of the usual bantering or joking. They may as well have been walking on opposite sides of the street.

They arrived at the Langiers' door a half an hour later. Even Phila could sense, unspokenly, that something was not right between Cecie and Joe.

"Where's Frank?" asked Kip.

"Where did he go?" Bernie asked, eyes clouding with concern.

"He got caught up covering a breaking story," Cecie said. "He should be back soon."

The phone rang. Bernie jumped to get it. "Hello…Frank! Thank God you're okay…another one?"

"We came not soon enough," Joe murmured, understanding.

"How many does that make…six? …Goodness. Did you get anything on who's doing it? …Inspector Burnstead's there…I'm sorry if I'm asking too many questions: your work habits are rubbing off on me. …I'll tell the others. …Bye, I love you."

She set down the phone slowly. "That was Frank. There's been another Mecha destroyed."

"We were expecting that. We overheard two men on the street talking about it," Cecie said.

"There's something going on you're not talking about," Phila said.

Cecie looked at Joe, who avoided her eyes. "It shall be told in due time," Joe said.

"All this stuff going on has us shaken," Cecie said, not wholly truthful, but keeping her tone even.

"Are you staying for supper?" Phila asked.

"No, I've had too many upsets lately, plus we met Hal out there and he tried feeling me up," Cecie said.

"Uh oh, no wonder you don't look good," Kip said. "Joe, you take her home and see she gets some hot tea into her and she gets some rest."

"I was about to suggest something similar to her myself," Joe replied. "If she would heed my suggestion."

"I suppose I've been burning the candle at both ends too much lately," Cecie said.

But back outside, Joe kept a cold distance from her, even as she let him take her arm.

"Joe, it isn't that I don't care for you or that I couldn't use your capabilities if I wanted to," Cecie began.

"I ask only for sincerity," he said. "I have been used before by clients who could not or would not value my nature."

"I'll bet you have, but I didn't do what I did for the same reason."

"Then why do you start to lap at the sweetness I offer, only to withdraw from it?"

"I've told you: it's not that I couldn't use what you have to offer. I could have hiked up my skirts back there and let you have your way right then and there. But I can't. My conscience and my principles tell me otherwise."

"In that case, either abide by these principles or avoid me at all cost," Joe said.

"Or," and his innocent suggestiveness returned, "Turn away from your principles and turn to me."

"You dangerous imp," she teased, poking his arm. He nudged her back.

She let him come into her room as she hadn't in days. She went into the bathroom to tidy herself up; she came back to find he had started her tea for her.

"Gee, thanks Joe," she said.

He merely shrugged as he leaned against the kitchen doorway. She let him linger as she drank her first cup. When his pager trilled—a rarity for a Sunday night—the regret she felt nearly brought the tears to her eyes.

"Will I see you at the Danse Macabre tomorrow night?" he asked, without most of the usual warmth.

"I'll be there," she said, trying to smile.

He did not stoop to kiss her good night, even when she lifted her face to his.

When he had gone, she put her head down on the table to cry.

They'd had a lovers' quarrel.

Frank wasn't surprised that Hal wasn't on the spot right away. He must have had an nasty altercation with someone—Jay?-along the way over: he was walking as if someone had stomped him in the groin.

"You okay, Hal?" he asked, as Hal snapped photos of the damaged Mecha.

"Hell, no, I just got kicked in the balls by a lover Mecha that was trying to protect a dark lady from my advances, _aaggghhhh_!"

"This lover Mecha wouldn't happen to look like me, would he?"

"How'd you guess?"

"Oh, Cecie told me you took a shine to Joe."

"Letting out all my secrets, eh?" Hal grumbled. "Figures."

He had everything he needed now…

To be continued…

Literary Easter Eggs:

"something satanic about Halloween?"—It often seems that just because I love Halloween, I'm a magnet for the kind of nervous religious nut cases (will all due respect to the genuinely holy people) who think that just because you have a jack o' lantern in your window it means you're holding a black mass in the basement. And if I got it wrong about the Celtic New Year, forgive me, I knew not what I did.

"Need coffee"—Based this on a cartoon on a coffee mug.

"don't get chicken…"—a nod to something that happened at the Livingston Street Terror; two girls came running out screaming in abject terror just seconds after they went in (It was scary, yes, but not that scary!). So a couple people, including me started twitting their retreating shadows.

Hal whistling "In the Hall of the Mountain King"—Ripped this from Fritz Lang's classic suspense film _M_ (yes, that is the title!), which deals with a murderer whose only identifying mark is that he whistles "In the Hall of the Mountain King".

Jay's eyes—modeled after Ralph Fiennes's eyes, which have been called the eyes of either "a poet or a murderer"; ever since I saw him in _Schindler's List_ as the terrifying Nazi labor camp commandant, I have not quite gotten over those eyes (I can say the same thing about Jude Law in a totally different way, but I digress…).

"dun and scarlet"—the colors of some kinds of hydraulic fluid. I was shoveling snow once on our driveway when I found what I thought was blood in the snow, but which turned out to be fluid that leaked from the transmission of one of my dad's cars.


	7. October 30, 2159

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +J.M.J.+

+J.M.J.+

The Shadows Between the Neon

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

I warned you this might carry over past Halloween; count this in the same class as the horror movies that are still running on the cable stations. WARNING: character death in this chapter; I did try to avoid it, but the killer decided to go after one of my creations. I hate it when that happens.

Disclaimer:

See Chapter I

VII October 30, 2159

Heading for the town homepage, Rouge City, USA

!Tonight!

The 20th Annual Rouge City Danse Macabre

Costume parade, 17.30 down Main Boulevarde

Dancing on Main Plaza, 18.30 to 5.30, October 31st

Be there or be scared!

Op-ed section, Rouge City _Broadsheet_

Jack the Ripper 2159

Cecie Martin, guest columnist

I have a shirt that reads, "I Survived the Rouge City Chainsaw Massacree". This isn't just a cheesy souvenir I keep as a closet tourist of Sin City, USA. I really survived it, along with a friend of mine. Some of you may remember the incident: four years ago, about this time of year, a religious fanatic who belonged to a lunatic fringe Bible cult went on a Mechacidal rampage in the streets of the city, armed with a chainsaw, mowing down dozens of lover Mechas, injuring several people and delivering eventually fatal wounds to one man.

The recent spate of Mecha killings has begun to feel like a slow replay of that incident. Or is this some high-tech version of the most famous, and still unsolved, serial killings of all time, the infamous Jack the Ripper slayings? Both cases have more similarities than differences: the victims are members of the oldest profession, they were all stabbed and brutally torn open with parts of their bodies removed and taken, presumably by the killer. Many theories still float about as to the identity of the killers in both cases. Too much time has probably passed to solve the 19th century case, but this case is continuing to unfold even as you read this. Who has chosen to repeat history using the 23rd century's answer to Victorian England's scapegoats? Who is killing these Mechas? A disgruntled customer? An angered spouse? A rigorist member of the anti-vice league? I don't judge the person who is doing this: they might be insane and unaware of what they are doing. I pass no judgment on the victims, either; they know nothing better than what they have been programmed to do. For whatever less than innocent uses people make of these beings, some are nevertheless capable of innocent comradeship. Don't let anyone say that these killings are God's way of ridding the world of a moral pest; someone may have been saying the same thing about the victims of Jack the Ripper.

But why hate Mechas? Whoever you are, wherever you are, I ask you to please stop these pointless acts of violence. If you are acting in retribution, remember that retribution belongs only to whatever Higher Power you acknowledge. Your actions against your titanium and silicon brethren will profit you nothing. Justice will have its due, but please turn yourself over to the proper authorities before you slay an Orga by mistake and thus bring a worse term of prosecution on your head. Is all this violence worth a death sentence?…

At 15.30, Cecie went down to the Lower Deck with her costume neatly folded in her new satchel. She checked her email and uploaded a few files at Chatters, but she didn't stick around for long.

She logged out and headed straight for the Langiers, watching the shadows between the pilings. No sign of Vincenzi and his cronies; so maybe they had worked out their plans for nipping over to Camden for some handouts. She'd been across the Delaware during the height of trick or treating and she'd seen the kinds of things people gave out. Candy was passé these days: most folks gave out packets of dried fruit or sugar-free gum or bags of mini rice cakes. And toothbrushes: a couple years back, in a town called Haddonfield she'd seen one kid dressed like a pirate rummaging in his treat bag, fishing out toothbrushes and dropping them down a storm drain.

Bernie opened the door when she knocked. "Have you had supper?" Phila called from the kitchen as the two girls went in.

"No, not yet, and I didn't have much for lunch," Cecie said.

"Oh, trying to get that proper goth pallor?" Frank teased.

"Maybe," Cecie said with a mysterious little smile.

A moment later, the doorbell rang.

"Trick or treaters already, and it isn't even Halloween night?" Frank asked.

"Nah, we don't do trick or treating here," Kip said, working at the eye of a jack o' lantern with a kitchen knife. "Not many kids in this city, and the few there are go over to Camden or down to Philadelphia."

"Good idea, the kids would get stuff in their sacks to rival the razor blades and rat poison that supposedly turned up in someone's Halloween candy," Frank said.

"Yet another urban legend that gets slanted at us," Cecie groaned, going for the door.

She opened it to find a treat on the step, Joe leaning with one hand against the doorpost.

"Hey, Joe, whaddya know—what brings you here?" she asked, stepping aside to let him in.

"I saw you come this way, and since my perambulations with Julien at my heels led me hither, I came by to see if by chance you still had need of an escort to the Danse Macabre?

"Or," he added, his voice growing colder by several degrees, "have you chosen another to do the honors?"

"No, I haven't." she took his hands in both of hers. "Come on in."

"Hey there, Joe, great costume!" Frank cried. "Yah look like a Hollywood gigolo."

Joe took this jibe with a bantering smile. ""You know I always dress thusly."

"It's like when I was in high school. The only day I was dressed right was Halloween," Cecie said. "One year when I went through a haunted house, and as I was standing in line, this guy behind me asks if I worked there. I had to disappoint him that I didn't."

"I could see that happening," Kip said.

"The only safe time of year to be a goth," Frank added.

"It's so nice to be a goth at Halloween,

You just blend right into every spooky scene," Cecie sang, grinning.

Joe watched Kip at work putting the finishing touches on the jack o' lantern. "What, may I be so bold as to ask, is the purpose of hollowing out this vegetable and cutting a mask face into the side?"

"The simple explanation is to scare away the evil spirits and to light the good spirits on their journey toward their eternal rest," Cecie said.

"But it can serve just as well as a spooky decoration," Kip said. "Speaking of evil spirits, any more news on the Mecha murders?"

"Nothing yet," Frank said, stretching his back. "I hope we have a reprieve for a while or that Burnstead catches the sick son of a gun. These late nights are killing me, but Hal's thriving on 'em."

"I imagine," Cecie said.

"I suppose there's no way of peeking into the future to see what's coming, except for peeking into a crystal ball or something," Kip said. "And that's risky to say the least."

"I've got a little Gypsy in me from waaaaayy back," Cecie said. "I don't have a whole lot in psychic ability, but I've seen a few things coming a mile off. Against Peter's better wishes, I learned a couple tricks of divination, though I only use them for a laugh or to plot a story."

"What do you mean?" Frank asked.

"I really shouldn't fool much with this, since it is a superstition to say the least," Cecie said. "But I learned how to tell fortunes from a deck of playing cards."

"If that's so," Kip set aside his almost finished jack o' lantern and took a deck of playing cards out of the dresser. He handed it to Cecie. "Let's see how you do."

"If Phila heard us," Cecie demurred.

"Oh, hang Phila by her thumbs," Frank grumbled.

Joe, sitting beside her on the couch, leaned in closer to Cecie. "Show us what lies in the shadows," he said, in a voice just above a whisper.

Cecie took the pack from Kip, took out the cards and shuffled them. She cut the deck, then shuffled one half.

"Since Frank egged me on, he's the first to get disappointed,' she said.

The top card was the Queen of Hearts. "There's a woman you love," she said.

"Oh, I've got her," Frank grinned.

The next cards were the five and eight of diamonds. "You'll have growing success at your work."

"Maybe they'll keep you at the _Broadsheet_ ," Kip suggested.

Next came the King of Spades. "But there's trouble ahead…a man will bring you suffering." The ace of spades. "It gets worse, there's a death in the future."

"Maybe this wasn't a good idea," Kip said.

"Aw, it's just craziness," Frank said.

She reshuffled the whole deck. "And since Joe devastated my resolve, he's next." She cut the deck and took the left half. First card was the King of Hearts.

"That goes without saying," Joe said, with a graceful shrug.

The King of diamonds, then the Queen of spades. "Someone is making a deal, and it's not a very beneficial one, either." Joe's face became puzzled, but he shrugged this off.

The Queen of Hearts. "There's a woman who loves you."

"There are so very many."

The King of spades. "There's trouble coming through a man, bad trouble."

The jack of hearts. "There's something about a young man, or a boy."

The ace of hearts. "You'll discover real love."

The ace of spades. She passed that one over, hopefully before Joe saw it. The queen of diamonds and the ten of clubs. "But a woman with money will step in and change your luck."

Bernie came in at that moment. "What's going on in here?" she asked.

"Madame Zecie was reading the future as it appears in the cards," Frank insinuated.

"Well, someone isn't going to get their supper if they don't cut it out," Bernie said.

"We were joking around; it's like when I used to read the horoscope for a laugh. Remember the goofy stuff I'd come up with? 'You will meet your true love in front of a Louis XIV mirror'," Cecie said in an airy voice.

"Mine were always something stupid like, 'You will meet your future spouse in a grove of jasmine and jojoba bushes'," Frank added.

"Did you?" Cecie asked impishly.

"No, we met near his grandfather's rhubarb patch," Bernie said.

Phila and Bernie had made chicken soup and biscuits, not heavy, but satisfying. Afterward, the Langiers got ready in their room, and the Sweitzes in theirs, what had been Irene's room, while Cecie got ready in the washroom, Joe waiting for her outside the closed door.

"I really wanted us to get decked out as a biker dude and his chick," Kip said, coming out. "But Phila wouldn't hear of it." Instead, he was wearing a metal colander on his head with some coat hanger wire sticking out of it like antennas. A silver-painted cardboard box covered with knobs and dials encased his torso; under that he wore a gray shirt and gray pants tucked into huge, ugly gray boots.

Phila came out dressed as an angel in a long white gown with a silver tinsel halo and wings made of glittery white gauze stretched over wire.

"You don't exactly match," Cecie said. "What are you supposed to be, Kip, an air compressor?"

"You're close: I'm supposed to be a 1950s robot," Kip said.

Joe looked Kip up and down, walking around him. His lips gathered in a smugly amused smirk. Putting his head on one side and looking at Kip from under lowered lids, he said, "You are a robot? You look more like a metal box than anything else. You certainly look nothing like me."

Cecie couldn't resist chuckling, which got Joe laughing as well.

"Well, the 1950s couldn't get the cars of the future right, let alone the robots of the future," Kip shrugged.

At this point, Bernie came out wearing a violet flapper dress under a very fake looking raccoon coat, with a cloche hat on her head. Frank followed her out clad in his trench coat over a rumpled gray suit typical of the 1930s, a brown fedora on his head with a paper press pass stunk in the bad, a pad of paper and a pencil sticking out of his breast pocket.

"Now what are you?" Cecie asked.

"I'm the Heroic Reporter, you know, like the stock character from the 1930s movies," Frank said.

"Kinda like going as yourself, only different," Cecie noted.

"I suggested it: he couldn't come up with a thing, but then I found this outfit in a costume shop, so we decided to go as a couple," Bernie said.

"We've even got the 1930s gigolo to add to the landscape," Frank said. He looked at Cecie. "My goodness, what are you? Morgana le Fay?"

"Cecie, couldn't you find some other costume?" Phila said.

"Oh, I found a LOT of other costumes, but they all left me cold one way or another," Cecie said.

"But it's so thin, you'll freeze," Phila argued.

"I've got one of those thermal shirts on, you know the ones they came out with that they based on the same technology that went into the heating system in Mecha dermis," Cecie said. "I wore it under my jersey on the way down and I barely needed my trench coat."

Joe knelt deeply before her. "Cast your spell over any man, but save your most powerful magic for me. I am already bewitched by the haunting beauty of your form. But why hide your face behind a mask? Is it so horrifying that its sight would turn men to stone, or is its beauty so blinding it would drive all men mad?"

"Rise, young wight who is neither of flesh nor blood nor bone, or perchance I may turn you into a man of flesh and blood," Cecie said, lifting Joe to his feet.

The parade had just started to line up as the six of them reached Main Plaza. Kip walked along stiff-legged, his boots clanking "realistically"; Joe held his head a little higher and added an extra swing to his gait. They got into line, but the swirling crowd separated Cecie and Joe from the Langiers and the Sweitzes.

"And the ignorant call my species 'buckets of bolts' by way of a pejorative," Joe snipped.

"Don't let that get to your processors, Joe," Cecie said, nudging him.

The crowd swirled about them: witches and wizards, ghosts and ghouls, skeletons and devils of both sexes, milkmaids and farmboys, Robin Hoods and Maid Marians; Cinderellas and other fairy tale princesses swept by on the arms of their handsome princes, though she spotted one guy with the mask of a boar, possibly meant to be "Beauty and the Beast".

Cecie spotted one couple possibly meant to be Adam and Eve sporting little more than some fake greenery and carrying apples, and a few others even less savory. She caught herself glancing away into doorways, half hoping to spot Julien.

Music from ancient horror movies played over loudspeakers, flooding the streets with eerie melodies and vibrations. Searchlights played on the night sky. Weird purple and white holographs flitted overhead, bats and ghosts and ghouls.

But the revelers were not the only ones on the streets. At every corner there seemed to be a security guard waiting. Cecie spotted a few men in the uniforms of the Philadelphia and the Camden police. She spotted Burnstead walking the street inconspicuously, as if he were any other sightseer come to see the country's wildest costume party.

Much of the neon lighting had been dimmed for the evening, ideal for the ghouls to hide in the shadows to lunge out and startle the unsuspecting, Cecie thought…Or for discreet encounters…or for the nemesis to lurk, watching for another hapless victim.

She hadn't seen Hal yet this evening, to her relief. She smiled to herself: Hal looked so bad, someone who didn't know better was likely to say something like "Wow, great mask! Where'd yah get it?"

A short guy in a ghoul mask and precious little else except some strategically place duck tape lunged out at Cecie with a roar. She shrank against Joe as if for protection. Joe shook one fist at the ghoul.

"Be gone with you!" he cried. The ghoul snarled at them and slunk away.

"You were not truly frightened," Joe noted.

"I just wanted to give you a chance to play the noble cavalier," Cecie said, twining her arm through his, stroking the smooth satin of his sleeve. Even through his clothes, she could feel his body responding, warming to hers.

The parade wound slowly toward West Square, toward the landside of town. The crowd wheeled slowly around the fountain there, heading back toward Main Plaza. Cecie kept one eye on the shadows beyond the gothic candelabras that lined the route.

The path led them back to Main Plaza, where already, a dance band had set up, playing a revised version of the famous piece "Danse Macabre".

Joe swung Cecie around in a twirl. She smiled into his eyes as they flashed past and she caught his other hand in hers.

He drew her to him, into the depths of the crowd, and lead her through the steps of a quick waltz.

A murder in a crowded public place in the middle of a celebration: yes, that would keep the case hopping. And let Burnstead, that gumshoe, pick out the killer in a throng of masked and costumed revelers…

The streets lay strangely silent that night. Orange and purple lights glowed in windows he passed, the colors of a celebration of terror known as Halloween.

The boss could not have chosen a better time of year in which to plan these killings…

Cecie leaned her head against Joe's neck as they slow-danced to an old chestnut called "Witchcraft" till she realized Joe was actually leaning his head against her neck as she nestled in close.

"You _are_ an enchantress," he declared, his lips close to her neck. He caressed the side of her throat. She parted her lips in a gentle sigh, which ended as a gasp/

He nipped her neck ever so gently, with a hint that he could bite harder if she so desired.

"You think you're a vampire, eh?" she said, but something was missing from her usual bantering tone.

"Rather, I am a vampire in reverse. Rather than drain the life from you," he replied, "I serve to make you feel more alive than ever before." He released her with one hand and let her loose form him in a slow twirl. She reached out for him with her free hand; he took it and drew her back, leaning over her in a low dip. She nearly fell over backwards from the wash of pheromones flooding her nostrils.

Everything went dark. The music stopped. Low cries of query and consternation rose around her. If she hadn't heard these, she would have thought she'd fainted in Joe's arms.

He drew her upright and led her through the crowd, away from the plaza, down a side street, to a doorway.

"You still desire me though your tongue protests otherwise," he said, holding her hands.

"How do you know? How can you tell?" she asked.

"I read the item of yours in this morning's _Broadsheet_ : only a lover of Mechas could have written such passionate words."

"I did what I could; I was just hoping to stem the tide of death. I hope I appealed to whatever sense of human dignity the killer may have."

"If it is Jay, he has little left: he has been degraded far worse than I ever have. And if it is Halloran McGeever, he has no notion of dignity: it has been stripped from him as it has been stripped from my species."

"You almost make me feel sorry for Hal, if he is the killer."

"Rather, you should feel sorry for your own soul as well. You have endured a great deal of pressure from within and without these past few days." He caressed her neckline, touching the topmost layer of her skin as lightly as a feather, as if a ghost of a caress brushed her skin. She trembled under his touch. "Let me relieve your soul of its exhaustion. Drink deeply of me, but only if you so desire."

He reached out and tilted her face toward his neck, bringing her lips into contact with his synthetic flesh, but not quite touching it. She had the power to choose.

She hesitated. She wanted to oblige him, and accept his offer, so innocently rendered, but she didn't want to waffle on her principles either.

Or, she could pay him back for being such a pest these two weeks.

She was just reaching out, closing the gap between them, her lips curled back from her teeth to nip him, when she heard odd music over the music from the plaza. She looked over his shoulder to the street.

A tall lean figure danced by itself in the dark. Weird carnival music played from somewhere nearby, awkward and whooshing, the notes eerily all wrong, the tempo hitting strange offbeats. Even his dance was graceless, a parody of Joe's elegant glide.

Cecie pulled Joe deeper into the shadows of the doorway.

"What is it, Cecie?" he asked. "Has a rival come to spirit me away?"

"No, don't look: I think it's Jay."

A small figure she guessed was Julien's skittered from the thick of the crowd on the plaza. He paused, watching the dancer and tried to match steps with him.

"Hey, Joe, what do you know—I have never seen you dance so ill," Julien teased.

"What you don't know is that I'm not Joe," the other replied. The scant light flashed on something metal the stranger drew from an inner pocket. Before Julien could dart away, the stranger's hand leapt out, snatching the front of his shirt.

Cecie's cry choked in her throat. She heard dermis tearing with a noisy surrussuss. Julien screamed, writhing as the blade tore into his chest so hard the point came out between his shoulder blades.

Julien's fists flew out; he hit the stranger in the eye, kicked him in the belly. The other let go of him so suddenly Julien fell from his grasp. The small Mecha hit the pavement feet first and tried to run.

The knife plunged again, slashing across the back of Julien's neck.

The lights came up. Julien lay sprawled on the pavement, alone. Cecie ran up to him.

"Julien!" she cried, kneeling. He pulled himself into her lap and lay still, his head against her breast. She held him, ignoring the hydraulic and lubricant fluids draining from his body.

He had been torn horribly, a Y shaped gash across his torso. Through the gash she could see that some of his ribs had separated from the metal breastbone, uncovering the metallic viscerae underneath: memory chips, power supply, his heartbeat simulator, the little valve in his chest still worked, the mechanism fluttering wildly.

"Mam'zelle Martin," he said, his voice synthesizer already fuzzed with static. "Take shelter in Joe's arms."

Joe knelt beside them both, his hand on Cecie's shoulder.

"Julien, I'm sorry," she said. A tear fell from her eye to Julien's synthetic flesh, cutting the slick of lubricants. The Mecha's lips moved, but his voice box had shorted out. She lip-read the words "shadows…neon…death…love."

Joe laid a finger on Julien's lips. The little Mecha seemed to take the hint. Cecie put Joe's hand aside and leaned down to kiss Julien's mouth. The lips yielded to her touch. Then she felt them grow cold. The oily taste of lubricant tainted them. She withdrew, trying not to tremble.

A crowd had begun to gather around them. Cecie heard voices: "Who's down, an Orga?"—"No, it's a Mecha."—"What sort?"—"Oh, it's one of them, it's just a gigolo."

Julien's head didn't move, but his body had grown cold. His face froze into a mask, his lower jaw sagged in what looked like a silent cry. His waxy features made her think of an antique doll: she swore if she tipped his head back his eyes would roll shut.

She reached down and touched his eyelids. The silicon skin felt rubbery, like a ghoulish Halloween mask; she pulled down his eyelids as far as they would go, trying to close them.

She wanted to make some noble speech to Joe about how she wouldn't let Julien's death go unavenged, how they, she and he together, would stand up to the killer on Julien's behalf. But her writer's knack failed her; she looked up at Joe, choking on a lump of mucus in her throat.

Joe put his arm about her shoulders, angling her head against his chest; with his other hand, he touched the top of Julien's head. Cecie's shoulders trembled and she burrowed her face into his shoulder. A tear rolled down her cheek, onto the slick satin of Joe's lapel, and rolled down it to fall, like a drop of rain, onto Julien's hair.

 _Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord!_ she prayed. _May he rest in peace…_ there had to be an Elysium for these creatures, these wronged creations. Something like Julien, so full of pluck and nerves, or like Joe, so charming and so strangely innocent, had to survive; they couldn't just die and be forgotten by the One Who made the ones who made them.

"Cecie, we lost you in the crowd; I hope you weren't coupling with that Mecha," Phila said, trying to push through the crowd. A small, dark Mecha in a flimsy gypsy costume stepped aside for her.

"Cecie! What's all over your dress?" Phila stared down at her dress, then at Julien's still form. "What happened?"

"He died in my arms," Cecie said, simply, despite the tears choking her.

Bernie stepped through in Phila's footsteps. She jumped back when she saw Julien's torn body.

"Oh no!" she cried and darted back into the tick of the crowd.

Hal approached next, armed with his camera, flicking his media pass before the eyes of the security guards that had pushed back the bystanders. Frank was at his heels, taking his pocket scriber and his own media pass from inside his costume.

Cecie eyed Hal, trying not to wrinkle her nostrils or glare at him.

"What have you got to stare at? Y' know I look like this all the time," Hal grinned at her. He snapped a picture of the body, but Cecie noticed something lacksidasical about the angle at which he held the camera.

"Come away from all this, Cecie," Joe said, tugging her arm slightly.

Other people pulled at her arms. She looked up.

Burnstead, several guards and a couple techs surrounded her.

"Miss Martin, did you see anything?" Burnstead asked her.

She nodded, too choked to voice her reply. Joe helped her up and supported her, or else she would have slid to the ground.

"We both saw who killed Julien: it was a Mecha who looks like me," Joe said, speaking for her.

"Did he have a badly sealed gash across his left cheek?" Burnstead asked.

Cecie nodded, yes. "He had this very mark," Joe confirmed.

"Take her home, Joe, take care of her," Burnstead said.

Cecie limply let Joe take her by the arm and lead her along the crowded street, one arm around her back, his hand under her arm. The throng parted before them as they moved along. She clung to him with both hands. Her tears started to fall then, flowing from both corners of her eyes, streaming from her nose, the way they had almost ten years before when the Amherst police had come to the door of her family's house.

"Mrs. Martin, we're very sorry to tell you this, but your husband Declan…"

The way they had fallen when the hospice nurse had to peel her from her mother's bedside…

A third death that wasn't really a death at all. But perhaps it wouldn't be that way. Perhaps Natterson could patch up Julien. But no, the damage was probably too extensive.

She'd seen his heartbeat simulator working valiantly, struggling, failing. She staggered, her mouth souring with bile. Joe righted her; she would not be sick, she insisted with herself. She let him lead her into the Graceley, up the stairs to her room.

She dropped her smart key trying to unlock the door; Joe picked it up and unlocked the door, opening it and guiding her into the room.

Joe closed the door behind them. He started to lead her to the sofa, but she shrugged his hand from her arm.

She went into the bathroom and shut the door behind her. She took off her gown and tossed it into the bathtub, then she shucked her shirt underneath and took down her bathrobe, hanging on the back of the door.

As she pulled it on and tied the sash at her waist, her stomach lurched inside her. She ran to the toilet and knelt, retching until her mouth went sour and sore.

She hadn't closed the door all the way. It opened softly.

Joe entered and knelt beside her. He closed the lid of the toilet and sat her down on it. With one hand he pressed the flush switch, with the other he reached for a towel hanging on a bar in the wall. He offered it to her and helped her wash her face.

He filled the molded plastic tumbler on the sink from the faucet, and knelt to offer it to her. She took the cup from him, rinsed out her mouth, then drank the rest and set the cup on the sink as she stood up.

"How often have you had to help a nauseous woman?" she asked.

"On an average two times per week."

"That's a lot."

"It is not much, given the number of customers I have."

He led her to the front room. She let him lead her to the couch and help her to lie down, on her side.

Before she could object, he lay down beside her, facing her, just inches away, his eyes looking into hers, calm, untroubled, and yet concerned.

She smiled faintly, yet the smile trembled. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force back the tears, yet they streamed out of their own accord.

He drew himself closer to her, guiding her head to his chest, his elbow under her head to support it, her brow close to his heartbeat (she trembled at the memory of Julien's split chest).

Joe ran a practiced but tender hand over her hair. "Yes, weep for Julien; few shall weep for him save his customers, in secret," he whispered close to her ear, her head under his. "Did you learn to like him? Does that explain you coldness toward me? Had you begun to prefer his company to mine?"

"No, I didn't prefer him over you. He was less to me than you are: he wasn't even a friend yet, though he made me laugh a little."

"Only a little?"

"Not like you. You're my only beloved one."

She let her tears loose even more torrentially after that admission, till her tears soaked the lapel of his jacket. He took no notice of the dampness: he'd probably had dozens of women weep in his arms before. He didn't shush her or try to get her to pull herself together. He stroked her hair gently, letting her grieve. She found herself wondering if Joe had the capacity to genuinely care for another, would he grieve if they were parted? What had Julien's death done to him, if anything? Perhaps, unbeknown to them both, changes were starting in him, deep inside him, in places his awareness could not access. He had it in him to care for another, she knew he did, even if he didn't know or couldn't articulate it. When he could show it remained to be seen.

A simulation was better than nothing: Hal's coldly smug indifference, Bernie's hysterics, Phila's reproaches…only Burnstead and Joe had really showed her much concern.

She sensed a low murmur deep within Joe's chest, above the soundless hum of his components, a melody slow and sustained, sweetly melancholy, which she recognized as the "Humming Chorus" from _Madame Butterfly_. She nestled against him, closing her eyes. Her chest jerked once in a while, but that soon ceased, soothed by the humming in her ear and Joe's heartbeat against her shoulder.

She didn't remember dozing off, but she awoke deep in the night to find she lay in her bed, the sheets and covers tucked up to her chin, her robe untouched.

The smart lamp on the night table beside the bed glowed on its lowest setting. Beside it lay a single folded piece of paper. She sat up, picked it up, unfolded it and read it.

 _Even on this night of tragedy, a customer has called for me by name and so I must leave your side. Would that I could linger with you to comfort your soul!_

 _"From ghouls and ghosts and long-legged beasts_

 _And things that go 'bump!' in the night_

 _May your God protect you."_

 _Your 'only beloved one',_

Joe

She held the note a long time, then slipped it under her pillow. A love note from Joe…

One more out of the way. He'd have a ready supply now, perhaps even a new housing untainted by damaged circuitry…

To be continued…

Literary Easter Eggs:

Toothbrushes—I've heard about people giving these out, especially at these large "Safe Trick or Treating" parties in large cities; I imagine some people in some areas have latched onto the idea, but there is a logical outcome to this (and yes, the kid in the pirate costume jettisoning the extra toothbrushes is Martin in a brief cameo)

"Great costume!"—This was inspired by a Halloween card I gave someone a few years ago, with two penguins on the front, one saying to the other, "What do you mean 'Great costume!'? We're penguins, you dork!" Also, art imitated life: the story Cecie tells about being mistaken for a haunted house volunteer actually happened to me at the Livingston Street Terror, when I showed up dressed entirely in black with a black scarf around my head

Kip's costume—I was going to dress like this for this Halloween, but I figured Joe wouldn't speak to me for a month afterward. Maybe next year.


	8. October 31, 2159, AM

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +J.M.J.+

+J.M.J.+

The Shadows Between the Neon

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

To add to the suspense, and to be a real pain at the same time, I divided the Halloween chapter into two halves, A.M. and P.M. If everything pans out, I may get P.M. up this week as well, but don't hold your breath (unless your breath is "only" from a breath simulator!).

Disclaimer:

See Chapter I

VIII October 31, 2159 A.M.

Rouge City _Broadsheet_

Brief Blackout Darkens Danse Macabre

About 21.00 the power went out in the area around Main Plaza, briefly plunging the revelers at last night's Danse Macabre into darkness. Officials at the power station on the Lower Deck blame a technical difficulty with a computer monitoring the power supply for this area…

First thing in the morning, Cecie went to Burnstead's room in the Graceley, a folder containing her copies of Hal's photos of Florent under her arm. She almost thought she had reached the wrong room: when she got to the door, she heard soft accordion music playing inside, a haunting ripple of sound, undulating and quivering, the wail of a lonely soul in a waterless place.

She knocked again. The music stopped and the door opened.

"Miss Martin, what brings you here?" Burnstead asked.

"I've more to tell you about last night,' she said.

He opened the door wider and stepped aside to let her enter. He let her have the chair; he sat on the window seat, next to a large accordion inlaid with ivory.

"I heard music before I came in; what was that?" she asked.

"It's called 'Scenes from a Mirage'; fellow by the name of Klusevic wrote it back in the late 20th century. Music helps me relax my mind when I've got an especially tough case: not listening to music, mind you, but playing it."

"That stands to reason: it's a right brain activity that gives the rational left brain a chance to rest and reboot."

He smiled slightly. "I like that analogy." Growing serious once more, he said, "Now what did you have on your mind?"

She told him about the night she and Frank and Joe had shadowed Hal.

"I think he's in on the murders; I think he's using Jay to commit these murders," she concluded.

"Smart criminals have used the less competent to do the actual dirty work for them, but there hasn't been a case of someone using a Mecha as a cat's paw," Burnstead noted. "Do you have any hard evidence to suggest there's a link?"

She opened the folder and took out the copies of the photos of Florent's body.

"Look at the angles of the shots: this one is much sharper than the angle of this one. And look at the grain of the image."

"It could just be different cameras. But this, this first photo, has the kind of quality of image you expect to get from a freeze-frame from a Mecha neural cube. But where would a newspaper photographer get that kind of image?"

"We asked that question ourselves," Cecie asked.

"In that case, perhaps I'd better look deeper into this," Burnstead said, reaching for the phone.

By noon, Burnstead got the search warrant from Camden. With Stanger and another guard, he went up to Hal's room at the Do As You Like Hotel.

McGeever didn't open to Burnstead's knocks. They unlocked the door with the manager's key.

Hal was nowhere to be seen in the room. On the desk stood a closed laptop with a locking device on it, a chain clamped it to the desk. Next to it stood a photo-quality digital printer and a neural cube reader, a device about the size of a toaster with a small dock in it for a neural cube.

On the dresser lay a Mecha repair kit: screwdrivers, pliers, sealant tubes and a small welding torch.

"Now why would McGeever have a Mecha repair kit? Does he have one hiding somewhere?" Burnstead asked.

Stanger opened the door of the closet and peered in.

He put his head too far around the door.

Something that looked uncannily like Miss Martin's friend Joe bolted out from the depths of the closet. It grabbed Stanger by the neck, lifting him from the floor and shaking him until his eyes started out and his lips and tongue turned blue.

Burnstead's hand went for his stunner, but the thing dropped Stanger and went for him, aiming for his knees. The Mecha knocked him to the floor, punched him in the ribs and butted its head into his throat. He tried to rise, but the thing pushed him down hard, cracking the back of his head against the hard floor. He blacked out.

When he came to a few moments later, Burnstead felt in his coat pocket for his cellphone. It was undamaged. He dialed 911.

"The Do As You Like Hotel, room 102: two men injured, one may be dying," he told the dispatcher.

He looked toward the door, where Digby, Stanger's partner had been guarding the door. The young man lay face down in a slowly widening pool of red.

"Make that two dying."

About 15.00 in the afternoon, Cecie went down to the Langiers to tell them what she'd heard about. Frank was out covering the news, but he came in shortly after her.

"I fell like I'm party to all this,' Frank said. "Hal's my friend, after all."

"You can't get personally involved: you'd put yourself at risk," Phila said.

"I don't want to see Hal get killed in all this mess," Frank said, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Then we wouldn't have to worry about him hitting on us," Phila shrugged.

"Dammit, Phila! This is no time for that holier than thou crap!" Frank snapped.

"He has a point," Bernie said. "Hal's in an awful mess and there's no telling if he'll come out of this alive."

"What about the two guards?" Kip asked.

"Last I heard they'd both been air-lifted to Camden in serious condition," Frank said. "There's a chance one of them might not make it there."

"Then we may have a possible murder on the horizon," Cecie said.

"You thinking what I am?" Frank said.

"Maybe, if you're thinking we should have a talk with Hal and get him to give himself up," Cecie said.

"You'll need to be carefully armed, though," Kip said.

"You still carry your stunner?" Phila asked.

"Yeah, but I don't think Kip was thinking of just that," Cecie said.

"You got it: I'll be right back." Saying this, he went out and came back carrying something that looked oddly like a large staple gun.

"Kip, how did you…I thought EMPs were… you know," Cecie said.

"I got a license for one, which covers the family: You kinda count," Kip said.

"Hold on, I'm gonna do some warming up before I use that thing out there," Cecie said, going out.

Hal had come back to his hotel room to find the door sealed and surrounded with yellow crime scene tape. He tore away the tape and broke off the locking device by kicking it. He shoved open the door and went in.

Nothing had been disturbed. _Thank life_ , he thought.

The closet door stood open.

"Damn Mecha, you got yourself arrested," he muttered.

As if in answer, the pager clipped to his jacket trilled. He took it out and read the display.

 _Jay. Usual spot. Nightfall._

He sighed with relief. Jay wouldn't be paging him if he wasn't free. Hal set about quickly packing the essentials: laptop, disks, repair kit, his stiletto in its leg sheath, a small EMP he'd rigged from spare parts, and the parts he hadn't had a chance to install in Jay.

He found another no-tell hotel in the Red Zone and checked in. He could hide out there until the time for the appointment. _Just don't do anything else to get yourself caught, Jay,_ he thought.

Joe came at Cecie's call; Bernie let him into the front room and through the house to the back yard.

"She's out in the alleyway, but you'd better be careful going out there," Bernie warned, leading him through the kitchen to the back door.

Bernie opened the door for him. He started to step out onto the strip of mossy grass between the buildings.

"Stay back, Joe!" Cecie's voice warned, from off to his right.

He looked off in that direction. Cecie stood poised, feet apart, the skirts of her trench coat pushed back. In her hand, she grasped a very strange-looking gun.

Something flew at her from the left. She raised the gun quickly. A bolt of hot white-blue energy exploded from the muzzle of the gun and struck the object. It fell to the ground, shattering into metal fragments even before it hit the moss at her feet.

"What was that about?" Joe asked, shrinking back into the doorway, eyes wary.

"That's why I didn't want you to come too close," Cecie said, holding up the gun on the flat of her palm. "This is an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse gun. I figured we might need it tonight, so I've been doing a little target practice on a few cheap toasters."

"Sorry to be wrecking some of your distant relatives, Joe," Frank said, at the other end of the alley, the ground between him and Cecie lay strewn with fragments of broken toasters.

"But why then did you throw it toward her?" Joe asked.

"That would give me a little practice hitting a moving target, in case Jay should try to attack me."

Frank looked at his watch. "We've got three hours to get ready. Hal and his accomplice will be on the move: I wouldn't be the bit surprised if they try to sneak out under cover of darkness."

Cecie looked from Joe's face to Frank's. "I just had a thought: what if Hal has an EMP?"

"Hmmm, I didn't think of that," Frank said.

Joe had a concerned eye on the fragments of toasters on the ground. "I may not be feasible for me to be about."

"I've got an idea: You're both the same size and you look about the same." Cecie's eyes went from Frank to Joe.

"What?" Frank asked, a little confused.

"What if you switched clothes?"

"My wife wouldn't like it," Frank said.

"But to what purpose? To what end?" Joe asked.

"Saving your very functionality," Cecie said. "You saw what it did to the toaster."

"What would occur to Frank if he were struck by that bolt of energy?" Joe asked.

"Probably nothing—unless he has a pacemaker."

"Which I don't," Frank said.

"The energy might make your hair stand on end, but nothing would happen. Go ahead: hit me with a bolt," Cecie said. She quickly took off her digital watch and took her scriber and her cellphone from her pocket, handing them to Joe. She handed the EMP to Frank.

He took aim and pulled the trigger. The bolt struck her full in the torso, staggering her back a few steps.

"Are you all right?" Joe asked, stepping toward her.

"Don't touch me," she warned. She leaned herself against the metal frame of the fire escape ladder.

"You'll want to give that bugger a torso shot. You hit him too low, you'll take out his lower functions, but he'll probably be glowering at you. Hit him too high, and you'll knock out the neural cube, but he'll be clomping around like Frankenstein's monster," Frank said.

"How do you know? Have you EMP'ed a rogue Mecha before?" Cecie asked.

"I'm just theorizing," Frank said.

"There's one problem," Frank added. "Joe's skin is glossier than mine."

"Maybe we can work a little wax into your skin," Cecie said. "Gel your hair back, no one except Bernie would know the difference. It can work; we'll be in the dark anyway, so that'll help narrow the gap."

"I hope this crazy plan works," Frank said.

Burnstead recovered quickly, he'd only had a few bangs and bruises; he wished he could say the same about his partners.

Security guards were posted on the entrances to the highway tunnels out of the city, stopping at every cruiser, checking the passengers to see if any of them matched the descriptions of Halloran McGeever or "Jay". More guards were posted at the monorail station. The lion and his jackal couldn't go far.

The question is, Burnstead mused, which one is which?

 _This was bad trouble indeed! Now they had the police men after them…._

"Never send a machine to do a man's job," Hal muttered, sitting by the phone in the new place, waiting for Jay to call him.

To be continued…

Literary Easter eggs:

"Police men"—This is not a typo, it is a reference to Roy Batty's similar complaint in _Bladerunner_ (For that matter, there's a lot of Batty in Jay.).

"Never send a machine…"—This is a rotated version of a line from _The Matrix_ : "Never send a human to do the job of a machine."


	9. October 31, 2159 PM

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +J.M.J.+

+J.M.J.+

The Shadows Between the Neon

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

At long last, the real Halloween Horror chapter! It took me forever to get this finished, since I was trying to choreograph everything that happens. But of course the horror elements entail a…

WARNING: contains violence (Mecha/Orga, Orga/Mecha, Orga/Orga, Mecha/Mecha), attempted rape, attempted m/m seduction, character death (it's really not as bad as it sounds, but I thought I'd play it safe.).

Disclaimer:

See Chapter I

IX October 31, 2159 P.M.

Extract from Cecie Martin's dream diary, morning:

I stand alone on a gray plain under an iron-colored sky. It isn't so much a plain as it looks like the streets of Rouge City bereft of every building and landmark. Nine patches of red luminescence glow in various places on the gray pavement, sending fading columns of light up to the sky. A cold gray light bathes the land, not moonlight, not star light, not eve the daylight of a cloudy day. Bells toll, funeral bells echoing and reechoing.

The plain rotates about me, or do I turn so that it only seems this way.

As I turn back to the spot I first faced, I find I am no longer alone. A tall figure in black moves toward me from a distance, a slim figure whose hair and face gleam in the dull light. Is it Joe?

It is the other, it is his nemesis, it is Jay with his cold gray eyes staring from his face, so like Joe's in every other respect.

I try to turn and run, but my feet have rooted to the ground. I open my mouth to scream and I cannot…

At 17.15, that day, Cecie stood in another plain, in the Rim Garden surrounding the city, looking up into the bare branches of a wind-gnarled tree against the darkening sky.

"Guide well my hand, O Lord," she prayed, reaching into her blouse and taking out her crucifix, kissing it five times.

She thrust it back inside her blouse and felt for the stock of the EMP under her skirt strapped to her thigh, encased in simuleather.

She turned to Joe, who stood behind her, to one side. "Now it's Halloween," she said.

He glanced up at the tree. "It is so because you gazed at those branches against the sky?" he asked, head cocked.

"It is for me," she said. "That's an old ritual I used to do as a kid." She started back toward the city, Joe at her side. "I just hope we don't have any more horrors on our hands."

"No tricks, just treats," Joe said, with an impish lilt, offering her his arm.

Hal turned off the small blowtorch and set it on the dresser. He took off his sunglasses and, after a minute, tested the weld carefully. It held.

He touched the pressure release switch; the dermis plates closed over Jay's chest cavity. Hal waited a few seconds, then pressed the reactivation stud behind Jay's left ear.

Jay's eyes rolled up, then down, then to the left, then to the right.

"Hey, Jay, whaddya say?" Hal said.

Jay sat up, still bare-chested.

"It's alive!" Hal cried, deliberately trying to sound like a mad scientist in an old monster movie.

"It still lives yet, thanks to your work."

"I've been good to you when others weren't," Hal said, gathering up the tools laid out on the mattress beside Jay and handing the Mecha his shirt. "But yah gotta earn your keep, boy."

"In what way this night?"

"I got one more for you to do, get you out of these old beat-up parts."

Jay slipped his shirt on. "Who then?"

Hal took a picture out of his own shirt pocket and handed it to Jay. "Take a look. When you do him, be careful: just knock out the neural cube and smash it good and hard."

"But what about the girl who protects him?"

"Have your way with her. She's a virgin from what I've heard."

"It shall be a delight to teach her the ways of lust."

"Careful though, she's a live one; she gave me the cold shoulder twice."

"I shall melt her resolve."

"I know you can," Hal said, kneading Jay's shoulder.

Cecie and Joe reached the Langiers without incident. They didn't pass any male lover-Mechas on the way down, anywhere. The few Mechas abroad were female, and even they had a hard time finding customers. One almost solicited Joe until he got up close to her, then she stepped back, a blankly baffled look on her cheaply pretty face. Thankfully, she wasn't Jane.

Cecie kept glancing back, her hands on the stocks of her weapons, ears open for any suspicious noises.

They nipped into a drug store on the Lower Deck to buy the can of wax Frank needed.

Phila let them into the apartment when they finally got there.

"What took you so long?" Phila asked.

"Were we that long?" Cecie asked.

"It took us no longer than usual to come down here," Joe said.

"It probably just seemed longer since we're all as nervous as long-tailed cats in a room full of rocking chairs," Kip said.

"Did you get the wax?" Bernie said, peering out of the bathroom.

Cecie held up the can. "I sure did."

While Cecie heated up the wax in a pan of water on the kitchen stove, Bernie helped Frank with his hair, using Joe as a model.

"How are we doing?" Cecie asked, coming into the bathroom with the wax still in the pan of water.

"I guess it's close enough," Bernie said.

"Yeah, it'll be dark out there, there's bound to be hairline differences no one except a Mecha would see," said Cecie, putting the pan on the bathroom counter.

"Get it? 'Hairline' differences?" Frank said. Joe smiled, catching the pun.

Cecie worked fast, spreading the wax on Frank's face and smoothing it over the backs of his hands before it cooled.

"Ugh, this stuff is stiff; m' skin feels like plastic already." Then cocking an eye at Joe, he added, "No wonder you Mechas have a generally blank expression on your face."

"Okay," Cecie said, taking the pan of cooling water with her as she stepped out of the bathroom. "Time for you fellows to switch clothes." She shut the door behind her.

She could hear the sounds of zippers, of cloth rustling and the clink of a belt buckle coming undone.

"Hey!" Frank cried. "Hey, Cecie."

"What?" Cecie asked.

"Y' didn't tell me he doesn't wear shorts," Frank said.

"Such a garment would be cumbersome to say the least for someone of my class," Joe replied, indignant.

A moment or two later, the bathroom door opened. A tall, dark young man emerged clad in a gray fleece shirt-jacket over a thermal undershirt and black corduroys, followed by an almost identical young man in gleaming black.

"Oh my!" Phila cried. "Which one is Joe?"

The two young men glanced at each other. "I am," they chorused, their voices and accents almost identical.

"This is weird," said Bernie.

"One of you has the wrong accent," Kip said.

"Are you referring to me?" said the young man in black, with a hint of an English accent.

The young man in gray pressed his fingers to his throat, as if checking his pulse. "That doesn't sound anything even remotely close to my accent," he said in a flat American accent.

"This is funny," Cecie said, grinning.

"Are you all set?" Kip asked.

Cecie felt in her pockets. "Stunner…check." She pushed open the split of her skirt. "EMP…check. Cellphone…" she didn't feel it. "Nuts, I must have left it home. Too late to get it now."

"There's phones out there any way," Kip said.

"What are you going to do if someone hits on you?" Bernie asked Frank.

"Easy," Frank said. "Just tell 'em I got a previous engagement."

"But occasionally there are especially persistent women," Joe warned. "These must be dealt with delicately but firmly."

"What am I getting myself into?" Frank said, only half-humorously.

The lights blinked.

"Whoa, what was that?" Cecie asked, looking up.

The lights went out, leaving them in blackness except for the faint glow from the jack o' lanterns in the window.

"Oh, boy, what's this?" Frank said. "No, make that 'What has happened?'"

"I was about to say, regarding your first statement, that does not sound like me," Joe added.

"Is it just us?" Kip asked, going to the window. "No, the whole street is out."

"Maybe it's just local, like when the lights went out on Main Plaza last night," Bernie said.

"Could be," Kip said, going for the cupboard.

"Ouch!" Phila squealed.

"Are you okay?" Kip asked, bumping about on his way to the cupboard in the kitchen.

"Yes, someone's standing on my foot and I think it's Joe."

"I am not standing on your foot," Joe said, his voice coming from a spot quite distant from the direction of Phila's voice.

"How could he know that? It's pitch black in here except for the jack o' lanterns," Phila asked.

"I can see as well in the dark as you can see in the light," Joe replied, in answer.

"Is he exaggerating?" Phila asked Cecie in a lower voice.

"No, he's telling the truth: all later generation Mechas can," Cecie replied.

Kip found another candle, stuck it into the neck of a soda bottle he found on the kitchen counter and lit the candle with his lighter.

"Great, Joe's got night vision," Frank groaned. "I suppose the keeping my eyes open all the time bit will help get more light inside."

Voices yammered outside then fell silent. A loud scream cut the ensuing night silence. They all looked toward the front door; Cecie gripped Joe's arm.

Frank went for the door and listened for a few seconds. He opened it carefully and peered out with just one eye.

Something rolled into the room.

Cecie nearly yelped. The severed head of an older model lover Mecha lay at their feet. Someone moving off into the distance whistled "Mountain King."

Frank closed the door. "Hal and Jay," Frank murmured.

"You shouldn't go out there," Phila warned.

"Phila," Cecie said. "We gotta do this."

Cecie opened the door wide. Frank and Joe followed her out into the darkness.

The entire street lay black and lightless. A few people had come out of their apartments trying to find out what was going on.

Slumped against the wall of the Langiers' house lay the headless carcass of a very plastic-looking old style male lover-Mecha.

"Good riddance," said one of the neighbors, eying it.

Cecie looked down at it, recognizing the Mecha they'd called "Big Jim", the one that had hit on her a few times outside the laundromat, until she found out how chicken was.

"Did anyone see anybody near this Mecha?" Cecie asked the thin crowd gathered on the sidewalk.

"It was too dark"—"Not with the lights gone out"—"They ran away too fast to tell."

"We haven't a moment to lose," Joe said, in a fairly good impersonation of Frank's voice.

They headed along the street till they came to a nook among the pilings where they could talk undisturbed.

"This changes everything," Frank said. "Hal and Jay can't be too far from here."

"What causes you to deduce that? Some time has passed in which they could have covered much distance," Joe pointed out.

"As far as I can tell, Jay wouldn't kill anyone unless Hal had rubberstamped the order," Frank said.

"But why did they slay this Mecha? Most of the victims were Gen 4's and 5's," Cecie said.

"That's a good question, unless Jay really is a sadist, or his fraternizing with Hal has really unhinged his warped mind," Frank said. "My guess is that Hal's staying upstairs and he's hiding Jay down here."

"So what do we do now?" Cecie asked.

"I doubt Hal and Jay travel together, so let's lure Hal to an open spot upstairs by giving him a phony message from Jay on his pager," Frank said.

"Good idea."

The three of them crept along the street, heading for the escalator hub. Joe and Frank went ahead of Cecie, Joe because he could see in the dark, and Frank as a cover. All along the way, not a light showed in the windows except for candles and battery lamps in some windows.

They found the escalator hub and climbed the stopped escalators. Cecie kept one hand on her stunner, the other on Frank's coattails, keeping up the illusion.

A thought crossed her mind: _You could be harmed._

She set it aside. They had to do this, they had to slip Hal the convincer: _Call off the jackal, McGeever; give yourself up._

They emerged onto Main Plaza. The entire square was black, the buildings black shadows against the night sky. A full moon shone down, silvering the structures around them and glinting, faintly iridescent, off the dead neon. Thin yellowish-gray clouds scudded across the sky, too wispy to obscure the moon or the stars.

They walked up Broad Way to Harlot Square. Joe took the lead now, with Frank and Cecie behind him, Cecie acting as a rear guard, both hands on her weapons.

She scanned the shadows, watching for any intruders. She saw a few couples hurrying past, but nothing to cause alarm.

They reached the phone kiosk. Frank checked to make sure the phone was working. "This line's alive." He dialed and waited a moment. "Jay. Harlot Square. Now." He hung up.

"On second thought," Cecie said, reaching for the phone. She dialed a familiar number. "Florence McGill. Harlot Square."

A metallic trill sounded from Frank's chest. He looked at Cecie. Joe glanced at him.

Frank held up the medallion pager which hung at his chest, showing the message scrolling across the display. "Good thinking, Cecie, in case someone mistakes me for a certain someone."

Joe and Cecie ducked into a doorway nearby. Frank paced the square, mimicking by turns Joe's cocky strut and Jay's deliberate strides. Cecie touched Joe's arm gently, just enough that he turned to glance at her, but not enough to arouse him. She hadn't been able to give it much thought, but she realized how odd it was that these two, Joe and Jay, should be of the same line. She knew from Vautrin that Joe was the prototype of this particular model, which meant that Jay came from later in the run. If that was the case, that made Jay the wayward younger brother of the Mecha concealed beside her.

But why was Jay so terrible while Joe was not? Probably that dangerous chip that Flyte had had removed from Joe before it blew. Jay must have suffered some kind of binary switch of some overrides in his system. She knew Joe was incapable of hurting a woman—unless she was a customer asking for the rough stuff—but she'd seen Joe defend her against Hal. But that had been acting defense of another.

If Jay was the same Mecha responsible for the rampages in Nova Francisco and Omaha, perhaps his behavior resulted from some sort of slipped override.

But how did Hal get in cahoots with Jay in the first place?

Perhaps she'd get the answer when Frank confronted Hal.

"Hey, Joe, whaddya know?" asked a female voice. "Y' wanna help me find my way home in the dark?" a short woman had approached Frank.

"Would that I could assist you, Milady, but a customer has called for me by name to meet her at this very spot," Frank replied in a voice so like Joe's that Cecie glanced at her companion.

"Aw, no fair," the woman sneered and stalked away.

As soon as the woman had passed out of earshot, Frank let out a sigh of relief. Joe smiled mischievously.

The wind rose, sending cascades of dry leaves scuttling across the square. She heard no other movement except the patter of Frank's feet as he paced the street.

The hum of Joe's components seemed to have grown more noticeable. Cecie glanced around.

She looked over her right shoulder into Jay's face.

She gasped frozen to the spot. A slow, cold grin twisted Jay's face. He raised one hand. With a click, his wrist unsealed and he drew from the hollow of his limb what looked like a switchblade. He pressed a button on the handle and a blade nearly as long as Cecie's hand sprung out.

"It looks as if I got lucky tonight," Jay said.

"Joe! Cecie! Run!" Frank screamed.

Joe grabbed Cecie by the shoulders at the same instant as he dragged her out of the doorway. They were halfway across the square before Cecie's heels hit the ground.

Frank got behind them, between them and Jay.

Joe led her down a side street, into an alleyway. Footsteps clattered past the end of the alleyway, Frank's heavier clatter and Jay's almost soundless strides.

She waited till they had passed, then she ran after them.

"Cecie, where are you going?" Joe called, hurrying after her.

"You think I'm going to let that murderer kill Frank?" she cried. She unsheathed the EMP, holding it with both hands, trying to keep it steady.

 _Torso shot,_ she reminded herself, taking aim.

Just as she pulled the trigger, Frank dove down a side street, Jay close on his heels. The bolt hit a lamppost, causing it to explode.

She cursed under her breath and ran after Jay.

Hal's pager purred against his chest as he walked the streets of the Lower Deck. He took it out and squinted at it, turning his penlight on its face to read it.

 _Jay. Harlot Square. Now._

"How the f- did that Mecha get up there so fast?" Hal muttered. He headed for the escalator hub.

He was almost there when he heard someone clear their throat behind him. _Great, Burnstead_ , he thought. He turned around, expecting to be interrogated again.

A man slightly taller and heavier than Burnstead stood there, clad in an overcoat with a velvet collar, the coat open over his chest and pushed back slightly.

"Mr. McGeever? I'm Merrill Loris. I work for Mr. Flyte of Sapphire Enterprises. We've had some discrepancies in the fees you've paid us for services rendered—"

"Listen, I've got a huge story I've got my hands full trying to follow right now. I'll pay you up as soon as I'm free."

Loris smiled thinly. "Are you aware of the fact that you're under suspicion in connected with the recent Mecha murders."

"Yeah, I'm aware of it. Why, you gonna sic the dogs on me if I don't pay up? I've had similar stunts pulled on me by pimps."

Loris folded his arms behind his back, which pulled the front of his jacket tight across the front of his shoulders, exposing a square lump on his left, which looked oddly like a pacemaker.

"Mr. McGeever, I'm not a pimp, and we are not in the habit of threatening our customers."

"Well then, what's the point in bringing up my troubles with the law?" Hal fingered the stock of the gun in his pocket, pressing a switch.

"I'm only trying to clear up this problem in a timely manner."

"Oh, before I get thrown in the slammer where I won't be able to pay you back, that what you were thinking?"

"No, that wasn't on our minds at all."

Hal drew out the gun. "Then think again!"

He intended to blow off Loris with it. A bolt of blue energy cracked from the muzzle to Loris's shoulder.

The larger man staggered back, clutching at his chest, beginning to wheeze.

"McGeever, you'll be paying with more than cash now," Loris grunted.

Hal quick-walked away. Jay would be looking for him and he didn't want to hang around for Burnstead to find.

Cecie darted a glance down each side street and alley mouth they passed, looking for any sign of Frank or Jay. _Don't let me be too late,_ she prayed. Joe followed her, rescanning each passageway, carefully instructed to let her know she'd overlooked something.

Nothing yet. She strained her ears, filtering the wind, listening for footsteps besides their own.

She heard a shout from behind. Joe ran up alongside her and grabbed her arm.

"There is no time to be lost: don't look back."

"What?" She looked back.

Jay followed them, not more than three paces away.

They dove down an alleyway into pitch-blackness. Where was Frank? She prayed he was unharmed.

Joe nudged her down a narrow side passage between the buildings, just wide enough for them to run abreast. She glanced back.

Jay followed their very footsteps, dragging the blade of his knife along the walls, trailing orange sparks in the blackness. He was sharpening the knife on the concrete. As he dashed out of the alleyway, the moonlight flashed off a silver spot on his neck, probably new damage. Had Frank done this? Had it bought him a chance to escape?

She couldn't open fire on Jay; they had to get out into the open, where she could see.

The darkness of the side passage did not let up, no light at the end of the tunnel.

She nearly ran full tilt into a brick wall at the end, but Joe yanked her aside and drew her close to a sidewall. He pushed her against a metal ladder. She got the hint: she thrust the gun into her pocket and climbed as fast as she could. She got to the rooftop and swung over the ledge.

Joe catapulted over the ledge and dragged her across the rooftop just as Jay's head appeared over the head of the ladder. He clenched the knife in his teeth.

Hal reached Harlot Square and scanned the shadows, looking for Jay. _You find something else to smash up on the way over? You caused me any more unnecessary trouble? Bad Mecha! No repairs!_

A tall, graceful figure approached him with long strides swinging to a rhythm all his own. Mmmm, better than Jay…

"Hey, Joe, whaddya know?" Hall purred. The other ignored him.

He snuck up behind the Mecha and yanked him around, shoving his back up against a wall.

"Is this the ear I'm supposed to whisper the password into?" Hal asked.

"I'm sorry Hal, I'm afraid I can't do that," the Mecha replied in a silken voice.

"What the -?"

Before Hal could say the obscenity on his lips, the Mecha struck him a roundhouse punch on the chin.

Hal sighed and crumpled to the ground.

"Besides, I'm not Joe," Frank said, stepping over Hal's prostrate form, and ran to the phones.

He dialed 911 and waited, nursing the bruises Jay had given him. No cuts, thank God; he had enough scars from other escapades.

Joe and Cecie ran from one rooftop to the next, jumping over the narrow airshafts, running up the slope of one peaked roof and sliding down the other side. Cecie could just hear Jay's footsteps dogging theirs.

Her sides ached and her lungs burned at each breath. She tried to rechannel some of Joe's less limited energy into herself, if that was possible, to give her an extra boost.

She focused on the ledge of the next airshaft as they sped toward it, not looking to the sides, not looking back: perfect tunnel vision. She ignored the panting gasps from her lungs and forced herself to run.

"There's an airshaft," Joe warned.

They leapt across it. For a sickening second, Cecie felt her stomach drop into her shoes. But they both landed on the other side, hitting the asphalt running.

She almost kept running over the edge of another ledge. Joe pulled her back in time to keep her from falling into the abyss.

They couldn't see a ladder down nearby.

Something grabbed Joe from behind and flung him back, toward the middle of the roof.

Cecie looked up into a pair of blank gray eyes.

"So, I threw a garbage can in his face, which distracted him. He lost sight of me and went after Joe and Cecie," Frank concluded.

"So where did you last see them?" Burnstead asked Frank as they sat out of the wind in a police amphibicopter.

"Over near the intersection of 18th Street and Magdalen Row," Frank said, holding an ice pack to a bruise on his forehead, where Jay had hit him with the pommel of his knife.

"You should consider yourself somewhat lucky, Sweitz: you could have gotten killed," Burnstead replied.

"He'd have gotten a nasty surprise if he'd cut me," Frank said. "Did you find Hal?"

"Not yet, he wasn't near where you said you'd punched him out. We're guessing he came to and crept away," said one of the guards.

"We're looking for him anyway: we found Raymond Flyte's accountant Merrill Loris near the elevator in cardiac arrest: he says McGeever knocked out his pacemaker with an EMP. We air-lifted him to Camden a few minutes ago," Burnstead said.

"I didn't think Hal could do that."

"That's what we want to know more about," Burnstead said. Then with a glint in his eye, "And I'd like to know why you're wearing our friend Joe's jacket?"

"Cecie and I got this hare-brained scheme to confuse Hal and get him to give himself up. And so that Cecie's boyfriend wouldn't get mistaken for his evil twin, he and I switched clothes."

"You ought to be on the force, young man," Burnstead said. "You'd be good at undercover."

"I've seen the police in action so often I guess I picked up some of the tricks of the profession," Frank said with a nonchalant shrug.

"Hello, Cecie," Jay said in a deadly purr.

"Let me go," she grunted.

"Why? I've only just touched you." he pressed his lower torso against hers, pinning it to the wall of the bulkhead. His knees were against hers, so she couldn't kick him or stomp his foot.

"Why not? You've got the fluids of ten Mechas on your hands."

He looked into her eyes. She saw nothing behind them, no intelligence, no emotional emulation, nothing.

"Do you think I enjoyed killing my own species? I did it only at the prompting of my boss."

"Halloran McGeever."

"Yes. You know of him?"

"Better than I care to."

"True. His company is not for everyone. But if you knew him better, you would find him an unusually agreeable fellow, even charming in his own fashion."

"I'll admit he's clever, but he's wasted his cleverness."

Jay chuckled, a dry, humorless ripple. "I disagree: he has used it well in this, as he called it, publicity stunt. And he helped me as well: we salvaged from the bodies of my victims the parts I required since my components had suffered much damage."

"The chip that went bad."

"The Babylon bug they called it. You're well-versed in these matters."

"Of course."

"Yes, yes, your liaison with the other of my line. You have something for us J-04679s, don't you?"

"Only for Joe."

"But not for me?" Something hard and cold pressed against her garments.

She spat in his face as a reply.

"Not so icy as we pretend," he murmured. "And smart as well. You're more than a pretty face." He pinned her face back with his, forehead to forehead. He turned his head slightly and ran his tongue over her cheek. "Sweet, the sweat of a virgin. To bad you'll have to die this way. You know far too much about me already."

He sawed the point of the blade through her clothes, into her ribs, just denting the skin. At the same time, he writhed his pelvis against hers; her flesh responded, but her insides—physical and immaterial—cringed.

He stopped of a sudden. "But I'm easy in more ways than one. Let's make a deal, shall we? If I rid you of the weight of your maidenhead, I'll let you go unharmed on the condition that you forget all that you have seen and reveal none of it to the police men."

"And if I refuse?"

The blade pierced her skin.

The candle in the largest jack o' lantern in the Langiers' window had burned down to a pool of wax, smoldering, the flame tiny.

The light faded in the pumpkin lantern's eyes.

It went out.

Cecie steeled herself. She would not cry out: that would gratify Jay.

"They can't help you now," he whispered, his lips almost touching hers. The blade at her ribs cut in deeper. Needles of pain shot through her flesh from the wound opening in her side. "What shall it be? The blade or me? Death or the little death?"

"Neither," she grunted through clenched teeth.

"Then I shall decide: both."

He reached down to undo his fly with on hand, while the other dug the knife into her flesh. He shifted position slightly as he did so. Over Jay's shoulder she glimpsed Joe creeping up behind him.

Jay suddenly fell over backwards. The knife tore from her body, ripping the flesh. She ground her teeth against the pain.

Jay lunged at Joe, who leapt aside lightly. He dashed at Joe again, but the other eluded him.

"So you wish to dance with me?" Jay asked sardonically.

"Not with the likes of you," Joe said. "And certainly not with my own kind."

Joe edged back toward the roof ledge as he said this. Jay rushed at him, but Joe hit the deck and rolled out of the way.

Jay toppled over the ledge. He free fell, a groan of defeat escaping his voice box.

Cecie pulled herself to the edge of the roof and drew the EMP. She aimed at Jay before he hit the ground, and fired.

The bolt struck Jay in the torso. Every conductor in his body lit up like neon tubing.

With a shattering metallic crash he hit the pavement and lay still.

Cecie sank back on her heels; the EMP fell from her numb hands.

Joe came to her side and knelt there. His hand went to the wound.

"Don't touch it, don't touch," she begged.

"I shall not," he said. He spread his hand slightly. The lights along his fingers glowed on her flesh.

Her wound gaped, a gash as long as her hand, along her ribs, showing the bared bones. The blood flowed slowly from it, a good sign.

"Mr. Flyte's residence is not far from here; he has a doctor Mecha in his service," Joe said.

"Take me there," Cecie managed.

Joe lifted her in his arms and slung her over his shoulder. He carried her to the further edge of the roof and leaped across the airshaft. He quickly found, down the back of the building, a metal ladder down to the ground, and inched down it to the street.

He hit the ground running, smoothly, without the least bit of jouncing to disturb his precious load, carrying Cecie through the shadows.

Sirens sounded overhead. Spotlights from above shone down on the darkened streets, but none near their path. Joe had shifted her from his shoulder to his arms, her head against his shoulder.

"'Life flows out of my body'," Cecie managed to say in a voice so steady it scared her. "'Pain flows out with my blood'."

"Do not think such things: you shall be safe in but a moment," Joe said. "We have only a few steps to travel."

They reached the foot of one of the towers near the edge of the city. Everything went a darker shade of black before her eyes as Joe carried her under the awning covering the entrance.

Concluded in the next chapter…

Literary Easter Eggs:

"Long-tailed cats…"—a colorful analogy borrowed from the excellent World War II movie _The Scarlet and the Black_

"I'm sorry, Hal…"—I had to get a Kubrick cross-reference in here: I based this on HAL the computer's line in _2001: A Space Odyssey_ : "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."

"Hello, Cecie."—Yes, I intended to evoke Hannibal Lecter's famous "Hello, Clarice" in _Silence of the Lambs_ (Jay's voice was intended to be evocative of Anthony Hopkins's voice as well.)

Jay's groan—borrowed from a spooky sound effects tape in my collection.

"Life flows out of my body…"—This is a quote from Blood Rock's "D.O.A.", which I heard on the radio around Halloween; it's one of the goriest songs I've ever heard, and it was made back in 1972! And the older generation likes the pick on the younger set for having gory songs…


	10. November 1, 2159

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +J.M.J.+

+J.M.J.+

The Shadows Between the Neon

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

I wrote this chapter so quickly, in such a dead heat, that I hardly realized I had finished it until about ten minutes after I'd set my pad aside. Then it hit me: I finished this story. This isn't exactly linear compared to the other chapters: It starts out on the morning of November 1st, then the somewhat flashback-like middle section continues from the cliffhanger from last chapter. Mild warning: I had seen this coming for quite a while, since the later chapters of "One of THOSE in Our Midst!" actually, but Cecie and Joe's relationship turns a corner and ends up at a fork in the road, plus there's also one slightly gruesome Mecha-related moment…but on with the chapter.

Disclaimer:

See Chapter I

X November 1, 2159

Camden _Tribune_ , Headline

NEWSPAPER PHOTOGRAPHER ARRESTED FOR MECHA DESTRUCTIONS, ATTEMPTED MANSLAUGHTER

Rouge City—Last night, Halloran "Hal" McGeever", a photographer for the Rouge City _Broadsheet_ , was arrested in connection with the recent series of Mecha destructions in the city and for the attempted killing of Merrill Loris, an accountant…

"I still can't believe you got separated from Cecie," Phila cried at Frank over the top of the newspaper he was trying to hide behind at breakfast.

"Do you think it makes me feel any better that I have no idea where Cecie and Joe got to?" Frank replied.

"Phila, this is no time to clapperclaw Frank; it wasn't his fault," Kip said.

"Cecie could be lying dead somewhere out there," Phila said.

The phone twittered at that moment.

"This is probably Burnstead telling us he just found Cecie's body," Phila added.

"Be _quiet_ , Phila," Bernie said.

Frank picked up the phone. "Langier residence."

"Is Frank Sweitz there?" asked a gruff but gentle voice. "This is Raymond Flyte."

"Speaking," Frank said.

"We've found Cecie."

"Is…she all right?"

"She's resting right now; we have her wound biotaped up."

"Was she…was she cut up badly?"

"She had a four inch gash along her ribs, but she'll survive. She's a strong young woman."

"Can we see her?"

"She's still sleeping the last that I knew, but she'll probably be up soon enough."

"I'll be over as soon as I can," Frank said.

"In which case, I'll give her the fair warning."

"Thanks. Thanks for taking care of her."

"It was my pleasure."

The line cut out and Frank hung up the phone. He turned to Phila. "That was Mr. Flyte. He found Cecie; she's all right."

"It's better than Burnstead calling us to tell us the worst," Bernie said.

Phila said nothing to this.

After breakfast, Kip and Frank went up to Flyte's residence, known as the Perfumed Alcove, in one of the towers at the north end of the city. Frank carried with him a brown paper package containing Joe's things.

A doorman Mecha admitted them and a small serving man who could almost have been Julien's twin met them in the lobby and led them up to the 10th floor, where Flyte awaited them.

They entered a sitting room just off Flyte's office. Another door stood slightly ajar, showing a glimpse of dark red hangings that might have surrounded a rich bed.

Flyte entered from the office, in his shirtsleeves. "Sorry to keep you waiting, I've been trying to get in touch with the partner of my accountant, Mr. Loris."

"We just read about his injuries," Frank said. "We're awful sorry."

"Thanks. That means a lot to me. Loris and I are more than just business associates: we're friends as well. We were both outcasts of different kinds."

"And that's why you like Cecie," Kip said.

"You found out my little secret," Flyte said, smiling. He beckoned them to follow. "Come along, she's waiting for you."

He led them out into a foyer and up a staircase to another suite of rooms to a reception room that opened into another foyer with a staircase. He went out and up the stairs.

"This the closest you've ever been to the inside of a 'ho-house?" Frank asked Kip.

"Yeah, I'm surprised we don't have any company."

"Too early in the morning: mornings are slack for all hookers, Orga or Mecha. Used to come to these kinds of places at this time of the day back before Hal got me on Mechas: the girls welcomed the business if they weren't resting up from the night before…but I shouldn't say any more."

"You might warp my little mind." They both chuckled at this.

Flyte came down a moment later. "Give her a minute, she's just had her breakfast and she was settling down for a rest. She's still a little shaky."

"We won't wear out our welcome," Kip said.

Kip explored the books on the shelf over the mantel, or at least tried to: he found a set of bound volumes of _The Pearl_ , a naughty periodical from the Victorian era.

"Yipes," Kip said, stepping back from the fireplace.

"Best not to get too nosy in places like this," Frank warned. "Though I must admit _The Pearl_ and things like that have something of an advantage over the modern stuff."

"What do you mean?"

"It's got a certain air of whimsy that the modern age has lost."

Something rustled on the stairs. They both looked up.

Cecie descended the stairs, clad in a scarlet robe tied at her waist with a silver cord, a silver cross set with five red stones hung from a black velvet band around her neck.

She stepped into the room. She had changed overnight: a new melancholy showed in her dark eyes. She kept one hand pressed to her side as she sat down on the couch beside Frank.

"Cecie…what happened to you?" Kip asked.

"I fell afoul with Jay's knife," she said. "I had to kill him."

"You got him with the EMP?" Frank asked.

She nodded. "There wasn't any other way. I didn't want to do it, but it had to be done. He was sick and scared."

"I can get the sick part if he really was the Mecha that injured those people in 'Frisco and Omaha, but what made him scared?" Kip asked.

"Hal was using him as a cat's-paw, but there was more to it than that. Jay still had a little bit of dignity left that the blown chip hadn't destroyed. But he's out of his sufferings now."

"And Joe saved your life?" Frank asked.

"Yes. He carried me here. Flyte had his doctor-Mecha biotape my wound. It's closing quickly: I can feel it tingling."

"No permanent damage?" Kip asked.

"I'll carry a scar, but it's nothing. I could have died, but I'm alive. I'm very alive."

Kip got up. "We're glad you are. I'll go call Phila and Bernie to let them know—if Flyte will let me use his phone."

"He will; tell him I asked you to call. And that's not just a cover: I want you to."

Kip went out. Cecie's gaze had turned to the floor: Frank could tell she had something on her mind. He looked at her, chin tilted down so that a rim of white showed under his leaf-colored irises. "It's happened, hasn't it?"

"You mean…?" she gave him a purely Gallic look, with a twist of one eyebrow.

"You?"

She nodded and gathered her robe about her as if she drew Joe's arms about her body. "I've been in him for a long time, but now he's in me. They live on affection, you know, even though they never ask for it."

"How did it happen?"

"One thing led to another, like they say. It was inevitable, you know. I'm a woman; if I were immune to his charms, there'd be some cause for concern. I've loved him for over a year now. It wasn't easy to keep this love inside me and hidden from him. He has his sensors; he knew it long before I let on to him. He was just waiting for my resolve to drop into his hand."

"Like a ripe fruit."

She ran her hand along her thigh. "The only fruit he can consume."

"It's none of my business, but would you let him have seconds?"

"I don't know."

Frank smoothed the sofa cushion beside him aimlessly with one hand.

"And not a word of this to anyone. Phila would have a conniption fit if she knew. I can trust you with this data."

"'This file is currently unavailable'. But you know she'll find out."

"I know, but I don't want anyone telling her."

"I understand. Where is he now?"

"He's upstairs waiting for me to come back, waiting so he can offer himself to me once more. It wasn't just once, but twice, later this morning. I couldn't keep my hands off him; I wanted to repay him." Tears showed on her cheeks though she smiled. "He's my first and probably my last. Someone like him you meet only once in your life."

"Was that your first time?"

She nodded. "I suppose I'm probably marked for life."

"Mechas do something to you. Once you've had 'em, you may never want a real lover again, or so they say. In some ways it's a minor miracle that I can do as well with Bernie as I do, after all the times I've been with Mechas."

She looked at him in earnest. "Did you feel like you'd died and gone to heaven?"

"Yes."

She ran her hand up her body, between her breasts to her shoulders, hugging them. "I don't think I can possibly be the same person after this. It's like…Cecie died and there's another person living in my body."

"If that were so, what is her name?"

"Magda," she said. "Magdalena."

In honor of the woman of Magdala who loved much, Frank thought.

Kip returned at this point. "Phila wants us to bring you down right away," he said.

"I shouldn't, I'm still a little shaky," Cecie replied.

"Besides, you probably want to be up there with your beloved," Frank said. "Oops."

"Why? What happened?" Kip asked. He looked at Cecie. Her face had gone red and she looked away. "I guess I missed something."

"Kip, swear to me on your mother's grave that you won't breathe a word of this to Phila."

"Tell me what it is, then I can swear."

"Joe and I…we became lovers."

Kip hesitated. Inwardly his jaw had dropped, but he dared not show it. Lovers…he didn't doubt Cecie could give in to her physical nature, but she had always seemed so rational and levelheaded around Joe. He'd seen women with things like Joe since he was a kid, but Cecie was different. Hearing about this was like hearing about a death in a friend's family, like seeing the stump of a favorite tree.

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"You're not the only one."

"I guess this does require my word of honor."

Cecie leaned wearily against the arm of the sofa, her face looking drawn.

"We're tiring you out," Frank said.

"No, it's not you," she said with a ghost of a smile.

"Besides, I gotta get back and finish writing up last night's news," Frank said.

"You certainly have your work cut out for you," she said.

They took leave of her shortly afterward. "I'm worried for her," Frank said as they walked home. "She's at a very vulnerable stage."

"I think she knows that," Kip said. "But if Phila finds out now, she'll be all over Cecie and that would finish her off."

Cecie went up the stairs to the room Flyte had let her use. She paused at the door, leaning against the doorpost, not sure if she could face him again.

The door opened as if by itself. A hand emerged around the edge of the leaf; the fingers reached out and touched her face, stroked her jaw, down to her neck. She pushed the door open and stepped inside.

"She couldn't be in better hands, really," Bernie said to Phila as they washed the breakfast things.

"What makes you say that? Flyte is a whoremonger, for goodness sake," Phila cried.

"He's a good man in spite of it; he's a gentleman."

"There were serial killers who were gentlemen."

"Remember what Cecie said about the spark of goodness hiding in the bad person and the cloud of wickedness lurking in the good person? I think this is a case of that. Remember when Joe got pinned with the restraining bolt and Mr. Flyte didn't hole it against Cecie? He's a good man."

"She'll be corrupted."

"Maybe we're all corrupted in our own way," Bernie said.

Later, Cecie lay nestled in the crook of Joe's arm, her eyes half-closed.

"Could you ask for a more thorough painkiller?" he asked.

"You're as good as morphine and just as addictive," she replied.

She let her eyes slide closed, pretending to sleep. But she knew that he knew she wasn't yet asleep.

After a little while, the sham became a reality.

Cecie didn't remember how she got up to Flyte's residence. But she remembered awakening with the pungent scent of smelling salts in her nostrils. She sneezed and opened her eyes.

She looked up into a slightly nondescript yet pleasant young man's face framed with silvery platinum blond hair. He wore a white lab coat over surgical scrubs; something quietly pensive and yet blank about the eyes and the gloss of his skin told her what he was: a doctor-Mecha, an older model that had been discontinued.

"Where am I?" she asked, trying to sit up. The Mecha pressed her back on the pillows gently.

"You are in a safe place with people you know; just lie still and let me look at your injury," he said.

She looked down. She lay on a wide bed covered with black satin sheets and a violet comforter, red velvet pillows under her head. She had been stripped, but a towel covered her breasts and the covers had been pulled up to her belly. The Mecha gently probed her wound, now crusted with dried blood.

She winced. She looked up to the head of the bed. Flyte stood there, a tall, white haired woman at his side. Cecie noticed a strong similarity between their faces, the same calm, patricianly hawkish features.

"Where's Joe? Is he…?" she asked.

The woman knelt beside the bed. "He's undergoing a diagnostic himself. So far he's all right," she said. "I'm Riana, Flyte's sister."

"No arteries have been severed, but some sutures will be necessary to aid the biotape," the doctor reported. "She will live."

The Mecha felt at her wrist, then placed his palm over her heart. "Breathe deeply, Miss Martin?" She complied, but the wound still throbbed. "Good, good. There is no sound of bleeding in the lungs or the chest cavity."

He pushed up his sleeve and opened a compartment in his forearm. He took out a vinyl tie with which he tied off her left arm, raising the veins. From another compartment in his other forearm and took out a small syringe.

"This may sting, but it will pass," he warned. She started panting. "Breathe deeply now and count to ten."

She looked away and forced her lungs to fill and empty slowly, ticking off numbers in her head.

At four her eyelids grew heavy, at five the room started to recede. By six she fell asleep.

A half an hour or ten hours could have passed. She heard movement about her. She felt soft hands smoothing something over her wound.

She peeled back her eyebrows to open her eyes and looked down.

A loose scarlet robe lay under her; the doctor Mecha smoothed a layer of biotape over her wound, a thick pinkish-brown patch like a second skin full of nanobots ready to deliver an extra dose of nutrients to her cells to speed the process of healing her flesh.

She looked about the room. It wasn't a large room, but she couldn't see much of it on account of the violet canopy and curtains about the bed. A battery lantern stood on the bedside table, with a carafe of water and a clean glass next to it.

"Thank you," she managed to say to Flyte, who sat beside the bed. "I owe you."

"No. _I_ owe you," he said. The doctor Mecha stepped aside and let Riana close the robe over Cecie.

"What do you mean?" Cecie asked.

"Joe told me everything," Flyte said. "You saved his brain again."

"I had to…I love him."

Flyte patted her brow as if she were his daughter. "I know you do, girl. I believe he does too, in his own way."

"You need to rest, Miss Martin," the doctor Mecha said.

Cecie closed her eyes and leaned her head back. A few moments passed. Someone nudged her awake. She opened her eyes. Riana sat beside her, a white tablet in her cupped hand, a glass of water in the other.

"This will take away some of the pain and help you sleep better," Riana said. Cecie sat up carefully. She took the pill in one hand and put the pill on the back of her tongue. Riana gave her the glass of water, which Cecie drank, washing the pill down her throat. Riana took the glass and drew the covers up over her chest.

"Now don't move for another five hours. The nanobots in that tape have to work on your flesh."

Riana got up and went out, closing the door behind her softly.

A moment later, it opened again and two tall forms, one slightly taller than the other, moved into the room.

"If she shows any signs of change for the worst, you send for me at once," she heard Flyte saying. "But don't touch her or go near the bed until at least five hours have passed."

"As you wish," she heard Joe reply.

She heard nothing more for a long time.

Hal came to a few moments after Frank had knocked him out. Nursing his jaw, he dragged himself through the darkened streets.

"Hey, Jay! Where in h- are you, fella?" He set off along Broad Way, looking for any sign of Jay. It was times like this he wished he'd thought to put a tracking device in Jay.

He went down a side street; his foot caught on something on the ground and he fell flat on his face. Cursing acridly, he got up and stooped to examine the stumbling block.

It wasn't a block at all, but rather a prone figure. Two pallid gray eyes stared sightlessly at him.

"Oh, God, JAY!" he moaned, falling to his knees, trying to survey the wreckage. Jay's limbs had detached from his torso and his head had rolled away from the rest of his body. Hal smelled the unmistakable stink of ozone over the dead Mecha. Whoever had done this had finished off the job with an EMP, no hope of repairs. Even his cube would be fried.

Hal turned over Jay's head and, taking the light intensifier from his pocket, turned it on.

The faceplate had been smashed in from the fall, but he could still dimly recognize his partner's features.

Police sirens wailed in the near distance, coming closer, but he paid them no heed. He heard an amphibicopter pass over. A spotlight splashed over him. Hal stayed still, hoping they would overlook him. It passed on.

He heard footsteps nearby. More lights fell over him. He looked up

A ring of policemen and security guards surrounded him. He stood up, raising his hands over his head.

Burnstead approached him. "I hate to break the news to you, but you're going to have to wrap this one up," he said. "You're under arrest for the assault of Merrill Loris. Or did you have Jay do that for you as well."

"How could he do that when someone did him?" Hal retorted. As Burnstead lead Hal away toward the police amphibicopter parked in a square at the end of the street, he noticed something dragging from Hal's left ankle. Burnstead stopped him and turned a flashlight on the object.

Jay's hand gripped the cuff of Hal's trouser leg.

Five hours, Mr. Flyte had ordered him. Joe sat in the shadows of Cecie's room, counting off the seconds by his internal clock.

Four hours, thirty minutes and ten seconds: Cecie had hardly moved the whole time, on account of the drugs she had been given to help her sleep. He watched her from his spot on the floor, sitting on a cushion, watching the bed.

Riana had given him the pillow though he had no need for it and Mr. Flyte had ordered him to keep a strict watch over Cecie in case anything happened they needed to know about.

She breathed quietly and deeply the whole time. She moved once under the covers. He heard her moisten her lips twice.

Four hours, forty-five minutes, fifty-six seconds: she moved, rustling the bedcovers, turning over on her back.

Four hours, fifty-seven minutes, fifteen seconds: he heard her sigh once. Was that a word? Oh…? No…?

Joe?

Five hours, two minutes, five seconds: her body twitched. He got up and moved to the foot of the bed for a better look.

Five hours, three minutes, two seconds: she sat up. She rubbed her face with both hands. She put one foot to the floor, then the other. She stood up, tentatively. She swayed a little and held onto the bedside table. She sat back on the bed and filled the glass from the carafe.

Five hours, six minutes: she set the glass on the table and slid her legs under the covers.

Cecie awoke with a parched throat. She touched her left side gingerly; she winced a little, but it was no longer the deadening pain of before. Good pain, healing pain, weakness-leaving-the-body pain, not death gnawing at her flesh. She sat up.

She tried to stand up, but she still felt weak. She sat down and by the light of the battery lamp, poured herself a glass of water from the carafe.

Outside, the wind still blew, whistling at the window. She set the glass on the table and leaned back on the pillows, sliding her legs under the covers.

She could not fall asleep again. The drugs to deaden the pain must have worn off, and there was still a lot of adrenalin pulsing in her veins. She lay listening to the night sounds.

Something moved in the room, rustled at the hangings about the bed. She looked down. The covers at her feet stirred, then rippled. They rose over something moving underneath that was not her. She flinched, drawing back from it.

The covers at her groin rose as if by themselves, rounding over some object beneath them. She tensed, ready to flee or to kick the intruder in the head, and yet she lay mesmerized by the movement. The entity moved toward the edge of the covers.

Joe's swarthy face looked at her from beneath the covers. He drew closer to her, his arms framing her spread thighs.

"What are you…? Go away," she mumbled.

"Your protestations do not convince," he said, inching closer. "Your lips say no, but your eyes say yes. You've had enough vile tricks played on you for one night. Why not allow yourself a treat?"

She almost laughed. "Come closer, I'm not supposed to accept any unwrapped treats."

He crept closer. A black silk dressing gown covered his form, but it had slid back from his shoulders and the skirts had opened over his thighs and more than that.

"It'll do," she said.

He crept closer still, keeping his body clear of hers. He lay down beside her, turning her onto her right side, facing him.

"No trick, just treats," he said, from inches away on the pillow.

"I could use a little sweetness to cheer me up, fella," she said. "Just be gentle…my wound."

Joe reached down to her left side, running just his fingertips over the fabric of her robe. "I shall handle you with the care that you need: no more horrors, only delights." His hand slid up to the neck of her robe. "May I?"

She laughed gently, her head still light from the painkiller. "Yes, you goblin."

Later the following afternoon, she nestled against his shoulder. Riana came in to check on Cecie.

"Well, you must be feeling better if you're at it again," she said, helping Cecie to rise. "How do you feel?"

"The pain's almost gone," Cecie said. She glanced at Joe, who reclined, propped up on his elbow, behind her on the bed. "He had a little something to do with it."

"I'll bet he did," Riana said with a smile. Joe returned the smile, his head bent slightly, eyelids lowered, but Cecie detected a proud little glint under there.

Riana led Cecie into the next room, a dressing room, with a walk in closet along one wall. "That thing that stabbed you ruined your clothes, but I think you're about the same size." Riana opened the closet door and rummaged among the clear plastic garment bags hanging inside. She took down a white gown with violet facings.

"Oh no, I couldn't," Cecie said, blushing.

Riana looked at her with the openness of a Mecha, no judgment, no questioning. "You're affected by him."

Cecie nodded.

"Well, hmmmm…let's see." She moved aside a few other garment bags. She drew out a dark green dress.

"Yes, that will do," Cecie said. "But…I don't mean to pry, but whose dresses were these?"

"They belonged to Flyte's wife, the mother of his daughter. She died not long after Kira passed away after a long bout of Werner's syndrome. Someone started a vicious rumor that Estelle killed herself with an overdose of sleeping pills, but she died of a heart attack. She couldn't bear to go on living without her daughter. Flyte never really got over it. That's possibly why he latched onto you: you're like a surrogate daughter."

"I wondered that; he told me once he would have had a daughter my age."

"Does that bother you at all?"

"No," Cecie said, taking the dress. "I lost my father when I was fourteen. It's more than coincidence: Flyte wants a daughter figure; I want a father figure. Why not reach out and help each other?

"And who would think," she added, "that a lover-Mecha would bring us together."

Cecie showered—alone, with the door locked. The doctor Mecha had removed the biotape and had her air the wound. She washed around it carefully. She dried herself with a huge towel Riana had provided. She wrapped it about herself and returned to the dressing room, where Riana had laid out a set of undergarments she had gone out to buy.

She pulled the dress on over her head and zipped the back.

She sensed a presence behind her. She turned around.

Joe stood in the doorway behind her, fully dressed, leaning one shoulder against the doorpost, eying her.

"How long have you been there?" Cecie asked.

"Only the time that it took you to fasten the back of your dress," he replied. "Exactly three seconds." He stepped closer to her, his hands clasped behind him, his coattails pushed back.

"If you think you're gonna find out how this dress looks crumpled on the floor, you have another thought coming," she said.

"I harbored no such intentions," he said, innocently.

She let him lead her down to the lower floor, where Flyte awaited them in the main room. Flyte stood alone in the well of a window through which the golden afternoon sunlight shone.

"Have you heard any news since last night?" he asked.

"Not since Jay's death," she said.

"And her salvation," Joe added.

Flyte touched the crepe band at his sleeve. "Loris, my accountant—my friend—was injured. Halloran McGeever shot him with an EMP. Loris was on a pacemaker; the surgeons over at the hospital in Camden managed to replace it, but he almost didn't make it."

"That's horrible," Cecie said. "Do the police know why Hal did this? Did they catch him?"

"The police arrested McGeever last night; they brought him to Camden for questioning. He hasn't told them anything."

"Typical of Hal—from the little I know of him. Which is a lot more than I care to know."

"Perhaps Frank Sweitz could unbind his tongue with some well-placed words,' Joe suggested.

"I'll have to pass that on to him," Cecie said. To Flyte she added, "Did you…what about Julien?"

Flyte shook his head gravely. Joe put a consoling hand on her shoulder.

"Julien was totaled," Flyte replied. "The one consolation—if you want to call it that—is that he was still under warranty. I can get a replacement, but it won't be the same."

"No, it won't," Cecie agreed and crossed herself on her chest.

She had her supper with Flyte, over which she told him about the previous night's adventures.

That evening, she went to Mass with Flyte, Joe at her side.

Phila went with Frank and Bernie to the early evening Mass. On her way back from Communion, she spotted Cecie in the back pew, next to Raymond Flyte, with that Mecha on her other side, a little closer than usual. Cecie kept her eyes bent the whole time. Something did not seem right about her, but what was it?

Phila peered back again. She hadn't seen Cecie go up to Communion.

Cecie hadn't budge from the same spot a moment before, but Phila noticed her chewing on her lip in a way that mean something was weighing on her mind.

After Mass, Phila approached Cecie on the sidewalk outside the chapel. The streetlights were on now, but the neon had yet to return.

"Cecie, are you sure you're all right?" Phila asked. "Should you really be up and about?"

"I had to come to Mass to thank God for getting me through last night," Cecie said.

"She's a gift from God herself," Flyte said.

"But…you didn't receive Communion," Phila said. "I don't…what happened?"

"It's nothing you really need to know," Cecie said.

Phila looked up at Joe, who kept a protective hand on Cecie's shoulder. She looked at Cecie.

She recoiled.

"You didn't!" she cried. "You…you…gave yourself to this…this _machine_."

"Let her who is without sin cast the first stone," Cecie said. "I'm only a human; I'm not a saint." She slid her shoulder out from under Joe's hand and stepped away. "Excuse me."

"Cecie?" Joe started after her. Phila dared to grab his arm and pulled him back.

"She doesn't need you now," Phila said.

But something jumped from his body to hers in that brief touch. She looked up into those eyes and she saw something there she had never seen before. Despite the blank look of confusion there, she noticed something else

Desire.

Not the seething satyr look she had glimpsed in Hal's eyes, but an innocent question.

 _What is this that binds us all together?_

She stepped away, chastened, and hurried to join Kip.

"Don't let her get to you, son," Flyte said, taking Joe aside by the shoulder and leading him down the street. "You go find Cecie; she might want you back." Joe smiled at this. "There, I knew you'd like that."

Cecie wanted only to be alone, to lie on the couch in her room with the door closed, in the dark, except for the batter candles that still glowed on the table.

Now she knew why they called it the little death.

Her side still ached, not the wound, but lower and more toward the middle, probably an ovulation pain.

No wonder she'd been so easy with him: mix a cocktail of anesthetic and painkillers with female hormones and the presence of a beautiful man in a small room and you had instant trouble.

She should just do the right thing and go home to Westhillston, her real hometown, if they would have her back. Which they wouldn't.

If it was the old Celtic New Year, she ought to make a resolution.

Go live in some place Joe is not?

Maybe.

Joe stood on the sidewalk against a lamppost outside the Graceley, gazing up at Cecie's window. He saw her shadow move across it, but she did not stop to look out. Agency policy told him to wait fifteen minutes for a woman to come down.

The time ticked by. At the fourteenth minute, she came to the window and drew the blind, blocking the light.

He waited one minute more. She might change her mind. The minute passed. He turned on his heel and went in search of more eager company.

Was it something he had done?

Or was this a case of post-act reformation?

Cecie got up and shucked the borrowed dress. She'd get a courier to bring it back to Flyte the next day. _Please, Flyte, don't do me any more favors…_

She ran her hands through her hair and put on her night things.

She poked at a few writing projects she hadn't touched since before the Danse Macabre, but her mind was far away, still fleeing over the rooftops, still pressed against the wall of the bulkhead with Jay's blade in her ribs, still in bed, wrapped in Joe's arms, her head pillowed on his chest.

She opened the journal on her datascriber and got it all down. Then she went back to work.

At almost midnight, she relented and crawled into bed. She lay on her right side, eyes closed, trying to empty her mind; but the image of Joe's sultry face emerging from beneath the coverlet came into her mind.

She swore he sat at the foot of the bed, awaiting her call to him or some gesture to stir him into action. Her flesh warmed, recalling his kisses, his caresses, covering every inch of her skin except the place where the knife had bitten her.

She curled up into a ball and wept till she swore her tears had turned to blood.

Frank met Cecie in Main Plaza next afternoon after Hal's arraignment in Camden that morning. She looked a little better, as if the aftereffects of her sufferings had lessened.

"So what's the news with the job?" she asked.

"I got in," Frank said, reaching for his wallet and showing her the official media pass, complete with photo and a chip bearing a copy of his genetic code.

"Congratulations!" she said. "In that case, eh, are you and Bernie settling in the city?"

Frank glanced around: a female Mecha that might have been the infamous Jane had her eye on him. "Nah, we're settling in Camden, across the river. I'm heading over there just now."

"What for?"

"Finkelsteen wants an official interview with Hal."

"So, what did he plead this morning?"

"No contest to all charges: armed assault, destruction of self-motivated property worth an excess of 800,000 NB, tampering with a public electrical power supply—"

"What?"

"The blackout. Turns out Hal busted the firewall of the computers at the power station here and uploaded a bug that paralyzed the computers last night and yesterday."

"I'd think Hal would be pleading insanity, just to keep himself in the news."

"He had the idea for this stunt to get himself some leverage in the paper. But as we know, that went like a lead balloon. Plus, he had so many charges he had no idea where to start. There's more, you know: aiding and abetting in the crimes of another, harboring a fugitive from justice, deliberately removing a license tag from a Mecha."

"Removing the license tag…well, that would explain Jay's lack of one. Did they ever find out where he came from?"

"Hal told me the whole story when I saw him last night. It turns out Jay was a street prostitute like our boy, but his owner, a woman named Candace Kincaid, was less vigilant than Flyte in keeping track of recalls and things like that.

"Hal met Jay in Omaha when he was there covering a story on a radical pro-AI group out there. You know what they say about the two sado-masochists finding each other in a roomful of people. Hal found out Jay was suffering on account of that blown chip. It fried some of his components, so Hal offered to help him—at a price."

"Don't tell me: sexual favors and killing those Mechas, which would kill two birds at one stone—excuse the pun: Hal would have his story, and Jay would have a ready supply of undamaged parts."

"Burnstead figured that out. I have to admit, I unlocked some information his questioning couldn't. I'd warned them that, so Burnstead brought me in to talk to Hal."

"So what's going to happen to him now?"

"They're sending him to maximum security in Camden for three years."

Maximum security. She trembled.

"He joked about what a dumb punishment it was, said since he'd spent a year in cryostasis, it would be like coming home—in about those exact words. Then after they release him they'll put a GPS chip in his shoulder."

"I don't want to think of anyone—not even Hal—in _that_." She'd seen photographs of the inside of a new maximum security facility, with the incarcerated in separate, coffin-like isolation pods stacked one above another, each criminal wired to a VR system which would force them to live over and over the crime they had committed—from the viewpoint of their victim.

An image passed through her mind's eye of Hal being led into the facility stripped to his shorts, the doctors strapping him into his pod and injecting him with a hallucinogenic sedative, then burning off his hair at the points where they would graft on the electrodes. She'd heard about Hal resisting arrest, but what would he do when they led him into prison? Would he resist, or would he comply, feigning submission but inwardly mocking his jailors. Or would fear reduce this cynic to a whimpering bundle of terror?

"I gotta get going and catch the monorail to Camden, before they put him in. You'll hear the rest—you okay, Cecie?"

"Yeah, just concerned for Hal."

They parted. Cecie went back to the Graceley as quickly as she could, avoiding anything that looked remotely like Joe.

Later that afternoon, as she got ready to go to confession and Mass, someone knocked at her door. She answered it, careful to look through the peephole first. It didn't sound like Joe's knock, but she had to be careful. She couldn't see.

Burnstead stood at the door. "Do you mind if I come in for a moment?" he asked.

"I was just going out, but I can spare some time." she opened the door wider for him.

"I just wanted to thank you for cornering that rogue Mecha for us—even if you had to destroy him in the process."

"I acted only in self-defense," she said.

Burnstead reached into his breast pocket and took out an envelope. "The Sheriffs' Departments of Nova Francisco and Omaha sent this over: it's a little token of their appreciation, you might call it." he held it out to her. she took it and opened it.

Inside were two checks, totaling 100,000 NB.

She held it out to him. "I can't take it," she said.

"I can't take it back."

She stuffed it into his hand. "You keep it yourself; I did what I did for Joe's sake, to save his brain."

He held it out to her again. "My supervisors will find it a little suspicious if I bring it back or keep it."

She took it. "You win."

Father Nick Crawford heard confessions late that afternoon. The line was unusually long, but not for today, All Soul's Day, with the spiritual financiers making sure they had invested enough time in church to gain the total remission of their departed loved one's remedial education in the hereafter.

He'd heard talk of McGeever's confession at his arraignment earlier that day. Fitting that it should happen that day, but he wished McGeever could have had it easier, or that the prison system could find a more humane means of correction.

A line of penitents…"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…

"I peeked at a dirty magazine"—"I swore at my wife"—"I hit my brother"—"I looked a little too long at a sex-Mecha, a female"—"I didn't let the clerk know she gave me back too much change"—"I got into an argument with my husband, and then I was wishing I'd married my sweetheart in high school"…

"My last confession was a week ago…and…Father, I've disobeyed the implications of the Sixth Commandment."

The voice sounded like Cecie Martin's, but the tone was hooded, even throatier than usual.

"You, er, did what?" he asked nonchalantly, even humorously. Cecie tended to theologize a little.

She drew in a long breath. "I've lain with my best friend."

"Well, what were the circumstances?"

"My head was fogged from anesthetics and painkillers following some minor surgery. I just wanted to be held. Joe was there with me; we were alone. He only wanted to console me, and you know as well as I that's one of the few ways he knows how."

"You probably weren't in full possession of your will. But were you conscious of what you were doing?"

"Yes. It hurt but I didn't care."

"What hurt?"

"Joe was careful to avoid my wound, but it still pained me." She chuckled humorlessly. "'When I should rush into sin, let it be with a limping foot!' I was crying out in pain as much as I was crying out in delight.

"But the trouble is, I don't know if I'm sorry for it or not."

"The fact that you're here confessing is proof enough that you are. What do you sense in yourself?"

"I'm dismayed that I've let this friendship go to a level I never really intended. I'm a little angry with myself. I fell like I took advantage of Joe, even though there's really no way that I can. I don't think I'd ever do it again."

"But if you do, just get up, and keep going."

"I've thought of going back to my hometown, but they won't want me there, not after what I've done. I don't belong here any more, either."

"Do any of us really belong anywhere, except the hands of God?"

"That's true. All my life, I've wanted just one perfect lover. I found him in Christ in the Eucharist, but I also found him in Joe. It's like Christ is my perfect heavenly lover, and…I can't say it."

"Say it, lay down that burden."

"And Joe is my perfect earthly lover."

"In that case, which do you value more?"

"I'm not sure. Just as I want to be free from this so I can receive Communion and be able to speak with Christ within the depths of my heart in the stillness of the chapel with my veil around my face, there's another part of me that wants to lie under silken sheets in Joe's arms, feeling him within me in a totally different way."

"The fact that you're here, confessing, means you really want Christ in your heart."

"I know. But I also know that once I leave here I'll be back to my old ways, longing for the wrong lover."

"Don't beat up on yourself for it; just pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again."

"I will."

She received her heavenly Lover at Mass and spent a long while afterward praying, talking with her Lover until the form vanished into her being.

She got up a little reluctantly and went out into the night.

As she stepped out onto the pavement, she wrapped her veil scarf-like around her neck, with just the tassel over her head. The sky had turned that iridescent black that always hung over the city at night.

Iridescent black, like the gleaming garments of the young fellow who approached her, his eyes scanning her up and down.

She tried to turn away from Joe, but she felt a gentle hand take the tassel of her veil and unwind it from her head, using it to draw her close. She turned her face to his.

Her eyes met those of her earthly lover.

The End…

Afterword:

The slight "lady-or-the-tiger" ending was purely intentional. Yes, there is a sequel to this, but I'm holding off on it for a while in order to devote more time to the too long neglected "Zenon Eyes: Eyes of Truth", to "The Eyes Have It", the _Minority Report_ /"A.I." crossover I tossed out into the world and a couple other odds and ends, including a alternate ending fanfiction based on the movie _Gattaca_ (if you have not seen it and you are a Jude Law fan like me, watch it or you won't get a dang word of my fiction when I post it! [You'll also know why it's an alternate ending…{get it? odds and "ends"}]). I'll tell you this much: the as of yet untitled sequel to this will be made up of simulated journal fragments, newspaper clippings, etc. and it will also ground the "Cecie Martin" series into "A.I." (It's set to take place just before, during, and just after the second act of the film.).

Literary Easter Eggs:

"a certain air of whimsy…"—I'm not sure about Victorian erotica, since I've never actually read any, but I remember accidentally running across in an antiques store a bunch of nineteenth century pornographic snap shots (by today's standards they were PG-13 rated. Really.) which were more cleverly naughty than genuinely obscene. The most memorable one was entitled something like "The Proudfoots' Maid Serves the Salad Without Dressing", which featured said maid serving said salad in just her underwear, and remember that 19th century women's underwear covered more skin than some 21st century clothes do!

Joe's hand reaching around the door—image derived from the _Song of Songs_

"When I should rush into sin…"—a direct quote from Paul Claudel's _The Satin Slipper_.

Maximum security—the idea for this device is a combination of the power plants in _The Matrix_ and the maximum-security facility seen in _Minority Report_ ; plus there was also an episode of the new _Twilight Zone_ which featured the idea of having criminals endure VR replays of their crimes—from the victim's viewpoint (I came up with the idea even before I saw said episode. Weird.)

"pick yourself up, dust yourself off…"—I don't know if it is, but this sounds oddly like a line from a 1940s song.


End file.
